Tampa Car Accident Lawyer

You have the right to be fully and fairly compensated for all of your damages and injuries. You have the right to select your own medical specialist to treat your injuries and document the cause and severity of them.

You have the right not to give a recorded statement to anyone without a lawyer.

You have the right to have your car repaired at the body shop of your choice, not the insurance company.

You have the right to be paid your lost wages from your own car insurance company.

You have the right to hire the lawyer you want, not one suggested by the health care clinic.

You have the right to take photographs of the crash scene, the other driver, their car, your car and the area where the car crash happened. By doing this you protect your right to prove the other driver was at fault and caused the crash.

You have the right to full, fair compensation for your injuries—and getting the money you deserve shouldn’t be an uphill battle. According to a recent legal guide published by Forbes, “A Florida car accident lawyer can offer invaluable help to crash victims. Those who are hurt in a collision should contact an attorney as soon as possible for assistance in understanding their legal rights and moving forward with a claim to maximize compensation.”

MattLaw makes your recovery process straightforward, even when insurance companies use any excuse to avoid their responsibility. Our experienced car accident lawyers (Tampa, FL) know all the tricks that insurance companies use to undervalue the claims of seriously injured accident victims. We know how car accident compensation works in Florida—and how to make the system work for our clients.

Put simply, “causation” is the relationship between one event or action, and its end result. How does the insurance company use causation to deny and delay your claim? They say, hey, your car was not damaged much, so you can’t be injured. Oh, if you are injured, it was from something that happened before this crash. Oh, your injuries were not from something before the crash, well, it must be from something after the crash.

What you have the right to do is to go to a doctor who is a specialist in treating traumatic injuries. Find a doctor who will document in your medical records what injuries were caused by the crash. And by the way, did you know that if you have pre-existing injuries, you are entitled to more money not less, because you are easier to hurt and harder to fix?

MattLaw Will ask your doctors to explain and prove the crash caused your injuries, or at the very least aggravated any pre-existing conditions. Your job is to make sure you tell the doctors about all of the injuries caused by the crash.

Florida laws protect people who have pre-existing conditions! The law basically says that pre-existing conditions make people easier to hurt, and harder to fix. This is why people who have prior injuries, arthritis, or other conditions that were made worse from a crash are entitled to full compensation. What are common pre-existing injuries? The most common defense is that even though you never had a prior injury, or never went to a doctor, you have arthritis. You have bulging disks, you have degenerative disk disease.

What you need to know is even if these normal signs of aging show up on an x-ray or MRI, you were asymptomatic (no pain) before the crash, and now the crash has started to cause pain in these areas.

For legal purposes, a pre-existing condition is defined as any medical condition, problem, or ailment that existed before your accident. If you were in a car accident and hurt your neck, a prior neck injury from an unrelated incident would be considered a pre-existing condition.

Having a pre-existing is no reason to forfeit your right to full and fair compensation. You will benefit from having an experienced attorney at your side to make sure your pre-existing conditions are not wrongfully used against you during settlement proceedings.

Even after a “minor” car accident, out-of-pocket medical expenses can accumulate quickly. Florida is what’s called a “no fault” state, meaning that insurance claimants first go through their own insurance after an auto accident. Your PIP (personal injury protection) insurance pays your medical bills. By law, all Florida drivers are required to carry a minimum of $10,000 in personal injury protection coverage. But Florida law does not require drivers to carry bodily injury insurance. What this means to you is that once your own PIP insurance pays your policy limits of coverage ($10,000.00) you must pay the medical bills out of your own pocket, or from your health insurance, or you will need to hire a lawyer at MattLaw to enforce your right to make the at fault parties pay for your medical bills above your PIP.

Sadly, about 50% of the cars on Florida roads do not carry Bodily Injury Insurance. What this means is half of the cars don’t carry the insurance to pay your medical bills, lost wages, inconvenience, loss of the enjoyment of life, and other losses. If you are hit by an uninsured (or underinsured) motorist, you need to seek compensation through your own insurance company if you have Uninsured / Underinsured Motorist Insurance coverage. Uninsured / Underinsured Motorist Insurance is the key to protecting yourself and your family. This is the only insurance that pays you! All the other insurance goes to pay your doctors, your mechanics that fix your car, and everyone else but you.

Without a settlement or verdict resulting from a car accident lawsuit, the injured person may be responsible for your own medical bills after a Florida car accident. Your PIP insurance covers the 80 percent of the first $10,000, and then if you have Med-Pay, this is the second level of insurance to pay your future medical bills. And after that it is your health insurance.

But what if your future medical bills are larger than your insurance is prepared to cover? After your own insurance is exhausted, you have the legal right to sue the driver of the car and the owner, and if the driver was working at the time of the crash, their employer for all of your future medical bills, and lost wages.

Talk to a car accident lawyer in Tampa today about how to get your future medical bills covered

In Florida, your lost wages (60%) are covered by your PIP insurance. But the bottom line is your PIP usually gets spent paying your ambulance and emergency room bills. If you have some sort of disability insurance they can pay 60% of your wages. But most people don’t have disability insurance, and the only recourse to get your past and future loss wages and earnings paid, is to sue the responsible parties for your injuries. The at fault parites Bodily injury protection insurance will pay the past and future loss of earnings, but only in a lump sum settlement, where you sign a release of all other claims. The responsible party will not pay your lost wages until the conclusion of your case. And even then, they don’t call it lost wages. They call it the Bodily Injury Settlement. Sadly, seriously injured people may suffer for years while the case is defended by the at fault insurance company.

Talk to a car accident lawyer at MattLaw to find out what your rights are, and how we can help you get back what was taken from you due to the negligence of another.