Florida Insurance Claims Lawyer Blog

A Florida jury sent a powerful message to dog owners this week when it awarded Marie Tatman $1.26 million in compensation for a vicious Florida dog bite injury Tatman suffered in 2007. The attack occurred at Wickham Park in Melbourne, Florida, where the victim's daughter had entered her own dog in a dog show. According to an article by Florida Today, Tatman's lawyer said that the attack was unprovoked and that it occurred when his client was walking past the dog, an Akita. The dog grabbed her ankle in his mouth and bit down, crushing the bones in his teeth.

The dog's owner claimed that the attack had been provoked by Tatman tripping over her dog, but the jury did not believe that version of events, probably in part because of the Akita's violent history. The dog had previously bitten at least three other people, and owners had been told that he should not be put back into a home. However, his life was spared on the condition that he spend the rest of his life in a rural setting, away from people.

Our Palm Beach injury attorneys has explained to clients that under the Florida dog bite statute, dog owners are strictly liable for any injuries or harm caused by their pets. However, the statute does allow a jury to consider contributory negligence. According to the language of the statute, "any negligence on the part of the person bitten that is a proximate cause of the biting incident reduces the liability of the owner of the dog by the percentage that the bitten person's negligence contributed to the biting incident." In other words, the amount of money that the owner will have to pay the victim will be reduced if the victim was partially at fault for the dog biting him or her. This could happen if the victim somehow provoked the dog, either purposefully or negligently, such as when someone taunts or threatens a dog or steps on its tail. Because dogs do respond to certain things out of instinct, a court that is hearing a Florida dog bite lawsuit will take these issues into consideration in determining how much responsibility really lies with the owner.

However, depending on the evidence, these cases can result in substantial awards for those urt. In the case, the $1.26 million verdict will help Marie Tatman and her husband pay for many of the expenses that they have incurred because of the attack. Tatman's ankle was so badly mangled that she nearly lost her left foot, and even after five surgeries, her left leg is still about three inches shorter than her right leg. In addition to the medical bills incurred during treatment for the injuries, she will have to pay for custom made shoes to accommodate the difference in the lengths of her legs for the rest of her life. She also has other permanent mobility issues that will require her to use a walker to get around. More than anything, though, the verdict will allow Tatman to put the responsibility for what happened to her with the dog's owner and move on from this very difficult and painful chapter of her life.

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A 2008 incident that started out as a routine trip to the bank for a Miami man but quickly turned into a terrifying nightmare has resulted in a $3.3 million jury award. According to the Miami Herald, on July 3, 2008, Rodolfo Valladeres walked into a Bank of America to cash a check for $100. The bank teller, thinking that Valladeres was there to rob the bank, triggered a silent alarm to alert police. Minutes later, local police descended upon the bank, rushed inside, and ordered everyone to the ground. They then grabbed Valladeres and forced him to the floor, where he was handcuffed and even kicked in the head. It took bank employees and police several minutes before they realized that they had the wrong man.

Around the same time, Miami police had alerted area banks about another man who was a suspect in several robberies. The man, whose image had been captured on surveillance videos at other banks, was also Hispanic, but he was about fifteen to twenty years older than Valladeres and weighed about 55 pounds less. Valladeres happened to be wearing a Miami Heat hat, as was the suspect in the surveillance video. However, according to Valladeres' attorney, it was not even the same design.

In court, Valladeres' attorney argued that the reason for the mistaken identity was that Bank of America did not require its employees to keep photographs of suspected bank robbers at their individual teller stations. Instead, bank tellers were shown the photograph of the robber and had to try to remember the face throughout the day. If the teller who triggered the silent alarm had a picture of the actual robber nearby, she likely would have realized that it was not the same man. Valladeres would have been able to cash his check and go about his business.

This situation involves a range of unique Florida civil law principles.

Florida false imprisonment law provided Valladeres with a cause of action in this case. False imprisonment generally refers to situations when one is held against their will--even for a short time. While it may sound like it refers to police detainment, in most cases it does not. In fact, it is often difficult to win a suit against law enforcement officers of this kind. Instead, most false imprisonment suits involve being detained by private individuals or businesses. In this case, the man sued Bank of America for their negligent behavior in incorrectly identifying him as the robbery suspect which led to the situation.

Since the incident, Valladeres has suffered from headaches and blurred vision, as well as emotional problems resulting from the trauma of being tackled and handcuffed by police. Although those injuries were inflicted by the police, our Palm Beach injury lawyer knows that Florida negligence law allows him to hold Bank of America responsible because the injuries were a direct and foreseeable result of the bank's mistake.

As with any kind of Florida personal injury lawsuit, Valladeres and his attorney are hopeful that the jury's verdict will send a message to banks and other private businesses to always be absolutely positive that they have the right person before subjecting them to the pain, trauma, and humiliation of being arrested. No one should have to endure what Valladeres went through that day. The verdict in this case will go a long way towards ensuring that the same kind of thing does not happen to others in our area.

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Our West Palm Beach injury lawyer brings you this story with the hope that you will pass it on to any friends and family that may be affected. Last week, prescription drug manufacturing giant Pfizer issued a recall for approximately 1 million packages of a birth control pill labeled as Lo/Ovral-28 and its generic version called Norgestrel. The company cited a problem with the packaging of the pills, which may result in the incorrect type of pill being taken on any given day throughout the cycle.

The pills are distributed in a package of 28, and women are instructed to take one pill at the same time every day, with the final week of each cycle consisting of inert pills. The active pills are most often employed to prevent the user from becoming pregnant, but they also have other uses, such as the regulation of hormones for some women. Pfizer has stated that some of the recalled packages may contain inert pills labeled as active pills or inert pills placed in the wrong position in the cycle. They also may contain extra pills. Any one of these scenarios could cause women to believe they are protected when they are not, which could result in higher numbers of unplanned pregnancies. Although the company believes that only about 30 packages were affected by the errors, they recalled about a million packages just to be on the safe side.

The issue was discovered in October of last year by a woman who noticed that the color-coded pills were not where they should be in her pill pack. In order to make it easier for women to remember to take the correct pill on the correct day, Pfizer makes the inert pills pink and the active pills white. When the woman noticed that there was a pink pill where there should have been a white one, she alerted the company, and an investigation was immediately initiated. The investigation uncovered some production problems that caused the packaging errors, and the company has taken steps to correct them.

The company and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have stated that no cases of unplanned pregnancy or other issues related to the recalled birth control pills have been reported thus far, but the recent recall may help any affected women to realize what went wrong with their birth control use. Because these particular types of drugs were prescribed to tens of thousands of women all across the United States over the last year, Florida women could very well be among those who purchased the recalled packages. Women should talk to their doctors right away if they think they may have taken these pills, and those who were affected in our area should consult a Boynton Beach drug recall lawyer immediately in order to determine whether their use of the defective pills gives rise to a claim against Pfizer. The lot numbers of the recalled packages, as well as instructions for what to do if you received one of them, are available on Pfizer's website.

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A very scary situation developed at a waste treatment plant operated by New England Fertilizer Company ("NEFCO") last week when a large explosion sent shrapnel and debris flying through the air. According to the Palm Beach Post, at the time of the explosion there were a total of three employees working on the site. One worker, a man named Matt Eggley who has been employed by NEFCO as a chief operator for about a year and a half, was injured in the blast. He was taken to a local hospital where he is being treated for his injuries; fortunately, doctors expect him to make a full recovery.

In the aftermath of the blast, police and other investigators are trying to determine what caused the plant explosion. The waste treatment plant where the incident occurred is a plant that takes byproducts from waste water treatment plants and processes it into a form that can be used in the manufacture of plant fertilizer. Eggley and the other two employees who were on-site were performing a routine maintenance and cleaning procedure, but authorities have yet to determine whether that procedure was a contributing factor in the explosion.

As our Boynton Beach personal injury attorney has learned from years of experience with many different accident cases, injuries caused by situations like this one can be some of the most difficult to deal with because it is so difficult to understand why they happened. When someone is injured, he or she often feels a sense of unfairness and questions why it had to be him or her. This can happen even with common situations, such as car accident injuries. in cases like Matt Eggley's, where a workplace injury occurs unexpectedly and without an apparent cause, it can be even more difficult to understand. Victims often suffer from emotional distress after accidents like this one because they have to learn to cope with senseless injuries that they, naturally, feel should not have happened.

Our Palm Beach injury attorney understands that it will take some time for the authorities to complete their investigation and figure out what caused the explosion. Hopefully, the source can be determined and precautions can be taken to ensure that this does not occur in the future. However, in cases like this one, even if the cause cannot be precisely defined, plaintiffs like Matt Eggley do still have options.

Under Florida negligence law, courts will allow what's called a presumption of negligence in a case using the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. Res ipsa loquitur is a Latin phrase that means "the thing speaks for itself." The idea behind it is that certain things simply do not happen without negligence, so even if the exact nature of the negligence cannot be identified, the very fact that the incident occurred shows that there was negligence. Defendants still have an opportunity to refute the claim of negligence, but the presumption makes it easier for a plaintiff to get compensation for his or her injuries and also makes it more difficult for businesses to avoid liability on a technicality.

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