Florida No Fault Law

Overview

If you get caught up in a car accident in Florida and want to file a case and claim against the person who you think is responsible for the mishap then you should make yourself familiar with the laws that are followed in Florida in case of such incidents.

Every individual is responsible for the vehicle he is operating. This burden of the driver himself being responsible for his act results in the driver being answerable to any wrong that he does. If there is any mistake done by the driver it is considered as negligence on his part. Negligence is used as the first point to file a case in the Florida court. Once it is proved that the sued party was careless then the next task is to prove that this negligence was the cause of the accident. Establishing a cause is a difficult task but if the sued part’s negligence has resulted in damage of property then this is enough to rule out negligence as the cause.

In order to be successful in the lawsuit you will have to establish that you have suffered a loss due to the motor accident. The damages can be inclusive of economic injury or non-economic injury.

• Economic injury loss includes lost income or wages, medical and funeral expenses, lost support and services, and replacement value or repair costs of personal property damaged in the accident.

• Non-economic injuries include pain, suffering, mental anguish, and inconvenience as a result of bodily injury that result for the accident.

Keep a note that you are entitled to file a lawsuit within four years of the date of the accident and if you wish to make a claim against the other party then it is advised that you consult a professional lawyer who can guide you in the right direction. Under the Florida law you can, not only sue the driver but also the owner of the vehicle or the employer. But in some cases you may not sue the owner.

The Florida No-Fault Law

The State of Florida has a “No-Fault” law, under this law the

auto insurer is supposed to pay you for the non-economic damages irrespective of who caused the damage. This law was brought into practice to lessen the auto injury fraud cases and to bring down the insurance costs. However there are exceptions to this law where you can collect the damage cost from the party who is at fault. This is possible only if you can establish that the bodily injury resulted in:

• Significant and permanent loss of important bodily function; • Permanent injury; significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement; or • Death.

The court has the right to reduce your damages if the other party can establish that actions on your part added to the accident. This is the comparative negligence principle under which the court can reduce your damage award by the percentage for which a jury found you responsible for the accident. The Florida law also allows the decrease of damage awards by any sum of money that you would have obtained from public or private insurance to compensate you for your losses. This is known as the Collateral Source Rule.

The No-Fault law is generally to signify any auto insurance plan that allows policyholders to improve financial losses from their own insurance company, regardless of fault. But, this is not the case it applies only to state laws that provides for the payment of no-fault first-party reimbursement and confines the right to take legal action, the so called limited tort option. The first party benefit coverage is known as personal injury protection. According to the present no-fault law the drivers can take legal action only if the damages and injuries meet certain criteria’s. These conditions, are known as a threshold, and are related to the severity and seriousness of the injury. Under certain laws it requires minimum days of disability that was caused as a consequence of the accident. Because of this strictness in the system it tends to reduce costs and delays in paying claims.

Recent developments

The Florida No-Fault bill has recently been revised to re-enact the law so that they can reduce insurance frauds, medical care and litigation costs. The insurance companied al over the state is divided into whether to support restructuring of the system or permit the state’s no-fault law to be exchanged by a tort-based system.

The revision of the law would make the laws more clear with improved understanding of the terms and conditions and the conditions under which a claim can be made. These alterations are being made to bring down the loopholes of the possible insurance frauds. The ways by which the fees for the lawyer was calculated will also change under this law. Besides this the law would establish a medical care program, which sets maximum reimbursement for the medical procedures most commonly administered after auto accidents to help control and provide insurers with some degree of certainty about medical care costs. The program would be set at some percentage of the Medicare schedule. Some of the projected modifications for recording medical care claim are similar to those implemented in New York.

These measures if not taken the state’s auto insurance system would come to an end soon. According to a study conducted the auto injury claim has risen to an alarming extent. The reason being more than usual visits to the medical practitioners, elevated health care expenses and more sprain and strain soft-tissue injury cases that are difficult to evaluate both for the degree of injury and recovery. These increased costs make it easier to reach the tort-threshold limit of $10,000 and to prosecute for extra reparation, which leads to deteriorating the root of the no-fault system.