St. Petersburg Personal Injury Lawyer

The aftermath of an unexpected accident can be stressful and overwhelming. When you hire an injury attorney, it gives you the opportunity to direct your time and energy to your recovery. Hiring a St. Petersburg lawyer is a win-win, as it will increase the likelihood of winning your personal injury claim.

When you hire a committed personal injury lawyer, you are more likely to win your personal injury case. People who hire injury attorneys typically recover 3.5 times more compensation. Contact our injury law firm anytime for an immediate case review with a St. Petersburg injury attorney.

The defendant(s) in your case will be well-represented by experienced adjusters and teams of skilled attorneys. They might offer a lowball settlement, hoping to scare you into accepting less than your case is worth.

The best thing you can do to put yourself on equal footing is to hire a St. Petersburg attorney with extensive personal injury experience. This way, you’ll have an advocate who will stand up for you and work tirelessly to hold the defendants fully accountable for your injuries and suffering.

Insurance companies and other defendants you might face have endless resources at their disposal. To them, the cost of experts, investigators, and specialists is nothing compared to what they might have to pay you for what your case is worth. 

When you hire our St. Petersburg injury lawyers, you will get the firm’s network of respected professionals who can provide invaluable insight into your case.

Most personal injury lawyers use contingency fees, which means you don’t have to pay anything unless they win your case. This fee arrangement gives people access to quality representation without upfront costs. In this way, contingency fees do not become another financial burden for a victim after an accident.

Your payment of attorney’s fees is contingent upon the attorney’s recovery of a settlement or verdict for you. If they don’t secure compensation, you do not owe any fees. If your personal injury attorney does recover compensation, they will take a pre-agreed-upon percentage (usually 33-40%) of your recovery as payment for their services.

The National Safety Council suggests that the comprehensive cost of a car accident injury can range anywhere between $51,000 (no injury observed) and $1,219,000 (disabling injury). But, keep in mind that every case is very different.

Ultimately, the value of your insurance claim or lawsuit will depend on several different factors.

• How serious are your injuries?
• What kind of medical treatment will you need?
• How long will it take for you to recover?
• Will you lose income because you’re unable to work?
• Will you be disabled – temporarily or permanently?
• How have you been affected emotionally?
• What will it cost to replace or repair property damage?

These are just a few of the questions that will need to be answered before you can get a better idea of what your case might be worth. Our personal injury attorneys in St. Petersburg have the experience necessary to value your claim and get you every cent you deserve.

In Florida, accident victims are typically able to ask for two distinct types of compensation after getting hurt: economic damages and non-economic damages.

Economic damages are paid to make you financially whole again after an accident or injury.

This includes compensation for things like:

• Medical expenses (present and future)
• Lost wages
• Disability
• Funeral expenses and burial costs, if an accident is fatal.

Non-Economic damages are paid to compensate for injuries that don’t have a set financial value. Rather, they’re highly subjective and personal to you.

Commonly awarded non-economic awards include:

• Pain and suffering
• PTSD and depression
• Disfigurement
• Diminished enjoyment or quality of life

In limited instances – like after a drunk driving accident – punitive damages might be available. These are awarded solely to punish the defendant for conduct that was intentionally harmful or grossly negligent.

Most – but not all – personal injury cases are based on a legal theory called negligence. What is negligence? Negligence essentially means that you’ve been injured because someone else wasn’t careful.

In order to win, you’ll have the burden of proving negligence. How? There are four different elements that you’ll have to establish: duty, breach, causation, and damages.

• Duty: The defendant must have owed you a duty of care, meaning that they had a responsibility to use “reasonable care” under the circumstances.
• Breach: The defendant didn’t act reasonably under the circumstances, breaching the duty of care owed to you.
• Causation: The defendant’s acts was the direct and proximate cause of your injury.
• Damages: You’ve suffered damages, as a result.

This might seem straightforward, but proving negligence can be quite challenging. If you’ve suffered an injury because of someone else, contact our St. Petersburg injury attorneys for immediate assistance. You’ll benefit from depth of knowledge that can only come from practicing personal injury law consistently for more than six decades.

Whether you’re going to submit a claim to insurance, request workers’ compensation benefits, or file a personal injury lawsuit, you’ll only have a limited amount of time to do so.

• Insurance claims must be filed within a reasonable amount of time after an accident.
• Florida law gives injured workers 30 days to report an accident and just two years to formally request workers’ comp benefits.
• Due to a recent change in the law, most personal injury cases have a filing deadline of two years (if the accident happened on 3/24/2023 or later) or four years (if it happened before that date).
• The statute of limitations is two years wrongful death cases.

If you miss the deadline that applies to your case, you’ll forfeit the right to ask for the money you really need.

Protect yourself – and your ability to get the financial award you deserve – by calling our attorneys as soon as you can after you get hurt. Our St. Petersburg injury attorneys will handle these procedural issues on your behalf and work to not only secure compensation for you, but also maximize it. Contact our experienced attorneys today.

Florida has modified comparative negligence rules with a 51% recovery bar. So, you can still get compensated for your injuries after an accident, but your economic award will be reduced if you’re assigned some of the blame. You also cannot get compensation if you were mostly to blame. Insurance companies will try to take advantage of the fact that they have a lot of experience handling these injury cases.

We understand the frustration that an injured person may feel, particularly when faced with insurance companies and other opponents who attempt to hold them responsible for their own injuries. Our St. Petersburg injury lawyers will be prepared with evidence that can disprove these claims or, at the very least, minimize how much fault is ultimately assigned to you. Contact us now for help navigating this process.