Pensacola Florida Personal Injury Lawyers | Pensacola Personal Injury Attorneys
Personal Injury Law in Pensacola and the Gulf Coast of Florida
Pensacola is the largest city and county seat of Escambia County, Florida, and actually the first European settlement in the US. Predating Jamestown, the settlement was established in 1559, over 450 years ago. It is the westernmost city in the Florida panhandle with an estimated 2009 population of 53, 752 people within its city limits. A city steeped in history, Pensacola was the site of the first Naval Air Station commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1914, and the Navy's Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, is stationed there to this day. Pensacola is a city further known for its seaport on the Pensacola Bay and the popular tourist destination of Pensacola Beach also located just across the bay. Pensacola is home to large tourism and hospitality industries due to its desirable climate and white, sandy beaches located on the Gulf of Mexico. Living in a city such as Pensacola means that residents are involved in a broad array of both occupational and entertainment pursuits, which bring with them diverse and unique risks.
For instance, the Port of Pensacola is the leading deep-water port in Northwest Florida servicing all descriptions of bulk, breakbulk and unitized freight. This equates to a variety of work-related injuries as well as claims based in maritime law. The Pensacola area is also home to a variety of transportation, education, and military industrial jobs. Workers in these fields might be injured on the job as a result of chemical or mechanical processes, sometimes suffering devastating bodily injuries.
Pensacola residents are faced with dangers every day, ranging from traffic accidents and boating accidents to dog attacks and professional malpractice. Additionally, Pensacola inhabitants suffer from other injuries that are typical across the nation and can be potentially catastrophic such as slipping on wet floors or being hurt by a defective product. Certainly living in the Pensacola area has many benefits; however, it is not always safe. There is also a high level of risk for many of its inhabitants. When you suffer any type of injury due to someone else’s fault or you suffer an injury at work, a Pensacola personal injury lawyer can help you and provide the expertise to aggressively advocate on your behalf. If you have a Pensacola personal injury claim, call one of the Pensacola, Florida personal injury attorneys listed on this site for a free consultation.
What Kind of Cases do Pensacola Personal Injury Attorneys and Lawyers Handle?
Pensacola personal injury attorneys often have an undeserved reputation for being “ambulance chasers.” Some people believe Pensacola PI Lawyers only want to take slip and fall cases. This is simply not the case. Escambia County personal injury lawyers’ practices are far broader than just Pensacola accidents. More importantly, Pensacola area accident lawyers and other Pensacola personal injury attorneys play an important role in protecting the financial and legal rights of injured people and their family members, even against large corporations with in-house lawyers. Just some of the types of cases which a Pensacola Personal Injury lawyer can handle throughout the State of Florida are:
- Product Defects & Products Liability
- Medical Malpractice
- Real Estate Malpractice
- Stockbroker Malpractice
- Dangerous Drugs
- Truck Accidents, 18-Wheeler Accidents, other Auto Accidents
- Workers’ Compensation Injuries
- Maritime / Boat / Cruise-ship Injuries
- Railroad Employee FELA Injuries
- Slip & Trip & Falls
- Dog Bites
- Bad Faith Insurance
- Government Liability - City of Pensacola, Escambia County, and State of Florida Liability
- Federal Government Liability
There are endless types of injuries and ways to become injured in the Pensacola area. Many of them have lasting effects on the victim’s life including their ability to work, their family life, and recreation. A Pensacola personal injury lawyer can advise a victim or their family of their legal rights. Pensacola Area Personal Injury Attorneys can also help you locate the best medical care. Although no one can truly fix the emotional or physical damages caused by a personal injury, a Pensacola personal injury lawyer will often be able to get you financial compensation to provide for you, take care of your family if you cannot work, and cover past and future medical expenses.
Why do you need a Pensacola Personal Injury Lawyer?
Nearly every Florida personal injury case involves insurance companies, and as you surely know, insurance companies can be frustrating and difficult to work with. They profit by paying out the least money possible while collecting premiums from as many customers as possible. A trained Pensacola personal injury lawyer has experience working and dealing with insurance companies. A Pensacola personal injury attorney can help you negotiate a settlement or, if necessary, take your case to court so can you get the compensation you are entitled to by Florida law.
Winning a personal injury lawsuit in court can be an extremely complicated task, especially for an untrained person who might not understand the legal concepts involved. There are many deadlines and formal requirements that can be extremely confusing. Even trained attorneys who are experienced in personal injury law need to use medical and scientific experts to prove that an injury occurred and that the person being sued was at fault. A Pensacola personal injury lawyer will explain to you the various legal doctrines that could allow you to recover money, such as negligence, strict liability, or intentional tort.
In a negligence-based case in Florida, you must prove:
(1) The person or party that caused your injury owed you a duty to protect you from unreasonable risk;
(2) The person breached this duty;
(3) There was sufficient causation, or connection, between that person’s action and your injury to constitute a breach of their duty to you; and,
(4) You suffered compensable damages as a result.
The analysis only becomes more complicated in a strict liability case, such as Florida Products Liability, where you seek to hold the defendant responsible for your injuries regardless of fault, or negligence.
In products liability cases, your Pensacola personal injury attorney must help you prove these following elements:
(1) The defendant manufactured the product which injured you;
(2) A defect which made the product unreasonably dangerous existed in the product when it was sold;
(3) The defect caused the injury; and
(4) The damage arose from a reasonably anticipated use of the product.
Often, a variety of medical and scientific experts might be involved in proving these facts and an experienced Pensacola personal injury attorney can arrange experts as well as properly make use of them at trial. Your Pensacola personal injury lawyer can also help you understand which claims may be brought on behalf of your family members for negligent or intentional infliction of emotional distress, or for loss of consortium.
Sometimes there is more than one person at fault. In these situations, a Pensacola personal injury attorney can make a claim against multiple parties. Take the following example:
If you were hurt by a defective consumer product, the manufacturer could be responsible under the law of strict products liability. Other defendants in the chain of distribution, including the seller or distributor could also be liable for your damages. In Florida, parties are usually only financially responsible for the percentage of your injury that they actually cause. A Florida personal injury lawyer will also explain comparative fault – that is, the idea that your own negligence might, sometimes, reduce your recovery. This often occurs in a vehicle accident, where you are 25% at fault but the other person is mostly responsible for the crash.
This analysis changes depending upon the specifics of your situation, and proving all of these elements to a jury becomes quite complicated. A licensed Pensacola personal injury attorney or Pensacola, Florida personal injury lawyer will help make these difficult legal concepts clearer and guide you through Florida’s justice system.
Finally, a Pensacola personal injury attorney or other Pensacola Area personal injury attorney can help you determine what your claim is worth and which damages you can likely recover. Under Florida law, a defendant found legally responsible for your injury is liable for:
- Past, current, and future estimated medical expenses
- Time off from work due to injury, including lost wages and lost earning capacity
- Property damage, such as damage to your car during an automobile accident
- The cost of hiring help to perform household chores you couldn’t perform because of your injury
- Damages for permanent disfigurement or disability
- Emotional distress, including anxiety, depression, interference with family relationships, loss of consortium and loss of enjoyment of life
- Other expenses that are a direct result of your injury
For more information on which damages you may be entitled to, including punitive damages and damages for specific types of injuries and wrongful death, please refer to the page on Damages.
Pensacola personal injury lawyers represent not only accident victims but also their families and spouses in cases throughout the Pensacola area. If you or a family member has been injured, you may be able to recover for medical expenses as well as other types of damages. Contact one of the experienced Pensacola personal injury attorneys listed in the top left corner of this page to represent you and protect your rights.
How long do you have to file a personal injury claim in Florida?
Under Florida’s Statute of Limitations, you have four (4) years to file a personal injury claim against the party or people that caused your injury through negligence. In a Florida Medical Malpractice case, you only have two (2) years to file your claim. You should consult a Pensacola injury lawyer or a Pensacola Area Accident Attorney to review your claim and pursue legal action before Florida’s statutory limitation period has expired.
How much does it cost to hire a Pensacola Personal Injury Attorney?
Other types of lawyers often charge an hourly rate in addition to a retainer fee. These lawyers use billable hours and keep records of how much they work on your case, and make you pay accordingly. Pensacola personal injury attorneys, however, charge in a completely different, and much more convenient, way. Florida law allows personal injury attorneys, or “PI lawyers” for short, to enter into “contingency fee” contracts with their clients. This means that your Pensacola personal injury lawyer usually accepts a percentage of any money recovered as payment if they win the case for you. The availability of a contingency fee agreement for an injured victim is extremely important because it can be quite expensive for an injured person, who might already be out of work because of an injury, to pay a lawyer up-front.
The details of a contingency fee agreement can change between attorneys and in different states; but, a contingency fee agreement means that if the injured person does not get money, then they do not have to pay the lawyer anything for representing them. You can see how this makes lawsuits easier for injury victims: they only pay for a lawyer if they win or settle their case. Since the lawyer makes more money if he gets you more money, he has an extra reason to try to win the case. In Florida, there are maximum amounts that an attorney can charge depending on the facts of your case. The laws explaining these amounts can be found on our Florida Contingency Contract Page. Please contact a Pensacola, Florida personal injury lawyer to discuss your case.
Qualified Pensacola trial attorneys are capable of investigating, preparing, presenting, and filing your lawsuit at all levels of the state and federal courts.
If you have been injured, seek immediate medical care at a Pensacola Hospital like the ones on the map below, and then contact a Pensacola Personal Injury Attorney.
Hospitals in Pensacola area:
Baptist Hospital
Sacred Heart Hospital of Pensacola
West Florida Hospital
Naval Hospital Pensacola |
Pensacola Area Hospitals |
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Pensacola Police Department
Escambia County Fire and Rescue Headquarters
Florida Law Enforcement Department |
For more information on Florida personal injury law, see
Florida Statutes, Title XLV.
Hire a Pensacola Personal Injury Lawyer Now!
Serving clients throughout Western Florida, including Bagdad, Bellview, Beulah, Bohemia, Brent, Cantonment, Elsanor, Ensley, Foley, Fort Walton Beach, Gonzales, Goulding, Gulf Beach Heights, Gulf Breeze, Myrtle Grove, Orange Beach, Pace, Pensacola, Pleasant Grove, Robertsdale, Seminole, Summerdale, Warrington, West Pensacola, areas in the vicinity of Eglin Air Force Base, Pensacola Regional Airport, and other communities in Escambia County.
Don’t hesitate! Call one of the Pensacola Personal Injury Lawyers on this site today for a consultation!