Lutz Auto Accident Lawyer
Every year, car crashes injure or kill millions of Americans. Some of these serious injuries include broken bones, head injuries, chronic neck/back problems, and internal injuries. The medical bills alone could be more than $50,000 in these cases. So, to put it bluntly, these accident victims need money to piece their lives back together. This money should never come from their own pockets.
The experienced Lutz auto accident lawyers at the Rinaldo Law Group routinely handle car wreck claims in Hillsborough County and nearby jurisdictions. Therefore, we are familiar with all the procedural and evidentiary guidelines. That knowledge includes the unwritten rules. So, we pour all our effort into obtaining maximum compensation for your serious injuries. This compensation usually includes money for economic losses, such as medical bills, and noneconomic losses, such as pain and suffering.
Electronic Evidence in Car Crash Claims
Sometimes, traditional sources of proof, like the police accident report, are sufficient to obtain maximum compensation. But the police report is often incomplete or inaccurate.
Emergency responders do the best they can with the limited evidence available at the scene. But police officers aren’t there to collect evidence for a future lawsuit. Their priorities include tending to injured victims and securing the scene. Therefore, important evidence often gets omitted from their reports.
Electronic evidence, such as a vehicle’s Event Data Recorder, often fills in the evidentiary gaps. An EDR is a lot like a commercial airliner’s black box flight data recorder. Depending on the make and model, most EDRs measure and record information like:
- Vehicle speed,
- Steering angle,
- Brake application, and
- Engine RPM.
A skilled Lutz auto accident lawyer can take these bits of thread and weave a rich tapestry that clearly shows jurors what happened in the accident, and why the accident was the other driver’s fault.
Unless lawyers act quickly and decisively, EDR evidence is often unavailable. To keep the insurance company from “accidentally” destroying the EDR, attorneys must immediately send spoliation letters to these companies. Furthermore, Florida has very strict vehicle information privacy laws. Attorneys must make precise arguments to obtain court orders, so they can inspect these gadgets and download the information they contain.
Establishing Liability
The aforementioned rich tapestry usually involves a legal doctrine like ordinary negligence or negligence per se.
Essentially, ordinary negligence is a lack of care. Most Florida noncommercial motorists have a duty of reasonable care. They must drive defensively and avoid accidents if at all possible. Most commercial operators have a higher duty of care. They are practically insurers of safe conduct for their passengers.
Negligence per se is usually a violation of a safety statute, like speeding or making an unsafe turn. In Florida, tortfeasors (negligent drivers) are presumptively liable for damages if they violate safety laws and those violations cause crashes.
The evidence in a case must be strong enough to refute some common insurance company defenses, such as comparative fault.
Basically, comparative fault shifts blame for an accident from the tortfeasor to the victim. For example, perhaps the tortfeasor was intoxicated and the victim was speeding. In these situations, jurors must evaluate the evidence and divide fault on a percentage basis, such as 70-30.
Florida is a pure comparative fault state. Thus, even if the victim was 99 percent responsible for the wreck, the tortfeasor is liable for a proportionate share of damages.
Count On an Experienced Hillsborough County Accident Lawyer
If you were seriously injured because of someone else’s negligence, the insurance company’s lawyers are determined to reduce or deny compensation. So, you need an experienced Lutz auto accident attorney from the Rinaldo Law Group on your side. Call us today for a free consultation.
