Our Florida Personal Injury Attorneys Are Auto Accident Lawyers Motorcycle and Big Rig Truck Accident Attorneys, Product Liability Lawyer, Florida Medical Malpractice Attorney, Food Poisoning Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Product Liability Lawyers, Serious Injury Premises Liability Attorneys and Elder Abuse Lawyers Serving all of Florida from Jacksonville to Miami, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Hialeah, Ft. Lauderdale, Tallahassee and Orlando.

Our Law Group lawyers welcome you to consider our Practice Areas pages, indexed on the upper left of this page. We will discuss briefly below our practice as auto accident attorneys, motorcycle lawyers and large commercial truck and big rig truck accident attorneys, serious injury premises liability lawyers, medical malpractice, drug and medical device product liability attorneys and food poisoning lawyers serving all of Florida from Jacksonville to Miami, Tampa, and St. Petersburg, from Hialeah, Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale to Tallahassee.

Our personal injury lawyers provide free consultations to those who have suffered serious injuries as the result of an auto accident or defective product, medical malpractice, food poisoning, from a fall due to property defects or failures to reasonably maintain commercial, residential or public premises.

Simply submit the Contact form and one of our personal injury lawyers qualified in the particular practice area and experienced in the prosecution of complex serious injury litigation will call you to provide our initial case evaluation and recommendations. We will consider representing potential clients throughout the state of Florida whether your injuries were sustained in an auto accident or as the result of medical malpractice, product or premises liability from Miami to Jacksonville, from Tampa to St. Petersburg, from Hialeah and Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale and Tallahassee. It is every potential client's right to ask about the credentials of any attorney whom he would consider to represent him, and our Florida serious injury trial lawyers welcome the opportunity to share with you our credentials, including our credentials as serious injury attorneys and experience in the particular practice area relevant to your case.

On this page our Florida personal injury attorneys will briefly discuss our practice areas. You may skip down to the relevant portion of the page at which we have bolded headings separating our discussion of auto accident cases, including motorcycle and large commercial and big rig truck accident litigation through to our discussion of Florida product liability, premises, medical malpractice and food poisoning cases. You may consider our discussion of the particular subject matter involved in your case here or on our separate subject matter pages identified on our Practice Areas menu on the upper left column of this page. Some jury verdicts and settlements are selected to discuss on the left column of this page, and then the description of our Law Group, on the right column of the page.

There is one subject that applies to all serious injury cases regardless of the practice area, whether it be pharmaceutical product liability, medical malpractice or elder abuse litigation, and that is the sophisticated Florida trial lawyer's preparation and presentation of the client's general and special damages in serious injury cases. While a particular case may appear simple or obvious in terms of its liability, such as where the other auto driver caused the accident by violating the plaintiff car driver or motorcyclist's right of way, or where a client is rendered brain damaged by reason of plain anesthesiologist error, or from the surgeon's sponge left in the client's thoracic cavity resulting in an infection damaging the client's vital organs, EVERY case involving a client's serious injury is complex to prepare and present to settlement judges and juries.

So we will start our discussion here by briefly describing the Florida serious injury trial lawyer's work in preparing and presenting the client's general and special damages and will refer the reader to our serious and catastrophic injury page for a more complete discussion of the type of preparation that is essential to maximize the potential for our Florida clients to obtain their full measure of general and special economic damages. And then, in order, our Florida personal injury lawyers will discuss the additional factors that can complicate even the most simple auto accident case, such as the necessity to identify the potential third party defendant with insurance or assets sufficient to fully compensate the client. Our Florida medical malpractice attorneys will then discuss strategies in lawsuits alledging failure to diagnose the rare disease and obstetrical malpractice and birth injury cases. Our Florida product liability lawyers will discuss pharmaceutical product defect cases and the option the client injured by a drug may have to pursue his case individually or in the context of a class action. Our Florida food poisoning attorneys will discuss the range of contaminants that may lead to both individual illness and outbreak cases, including specifically E. coli food poisoning and HUS litigation. Our Florida serious injury premises liability lawyers will discuss complex cases against the owners of residential and commercial property, as well as design defects and failures of the government entity, city or state, to maintain public property. Our Florida elder abuse lawyers, finally, will discuss senior physical abuse and the distinction between senior neglect and abandonment, as well as elder financial abuse.

Our this page our Law Group personal injury lawyers provide an informational discussion of our practice areas, each with a heading so that you may find the information most relevant to your case, but if you have suffered serious or catastrophic injury, as the result of an auto accident, fall, physician negligence, a defective product, food poisoning or elder abuse, please read the next section on the complexities of preparing and presenting the seriously injured client's general and special damages. Among the credentials you may wish to consider in selecting the lawyer best suited to represent you, in addition to his qualifications in the particular practice area, is the trial lawyer's experience in prosecuting serious and catastrophic injury litigation.

Our Serious Injury Trial Lawyers will Discuss The Complex Strategies for Preparing the Seriously or Catastrophically Injured Client's General and Special Economic Damages in Auto Accident, Premises Liability, Medical Malpractice, Product Liability, Food Poisoning and Elder Abuse Litigation. Our Serious Injury Trial Lawyers Will Consider Representing Potential Clients who have Suffered Serious or Catastrophic Injuries Throughout Florida, from Ft. Lauderdale and Hialeah to Jacksonville and Miami, from Orlando to Tallahassee to Tampa.

The Florida trial lawyer's most important contribution to maximize the opportunity that his client will recover fully for his serious injury and all of his consequential damages is often his development of the evidence to demonstrate his client's general and special economic damages for presentation to settlement judges or mediators, and then if the case doesn't settle, to the jury.

Our Florida personal injury lawyers provide a more complete discussion of the preparation and presentation of general and special economic damages on our "Serious and Catastrophic Injury Attorneys" web page, however the subject is sufficiently important in the full range of cases, from auto, motorcycle and big rig cases to elder abuse, medical malpractice, food poisoning and product liability cases that our Florida lawyers will provide a brief summary here of our strategies in prosecuting the damage case of the seriously injured client.

Some personal injury lawyers will refer to "general damages" as "pain and suffering," however our Florida personal injury trial lawyers commonly find that the seriously injured client will consider his greatest element of general damages to be his "loss of enjoyment of life." Demonstrating general damages begins with the Florida lawyer's engagement of expert medical doctors in the disciplines essential to cover the full nature and extent of the client's injuries, which in any subject matter might vary from traumatic brain injury, TBI, to spinal cord injuries such as quadriplegia or paraplegia, debilitating internal injury, catastrophic orthopedic injury, limb amputation and every other manner of debilitating injury. In presenting the client's "loss of enjoyment of life" damages, the serious injury Florida personal injury lawyer will obtain the testimony of the client, his family and friends, photos and home movies to demonstrate the activities that the client enjoyed participating in before the accident and then will juxtapose against it a professionally produced "Day in the Life" film depicting the client's courage in overcoming all of the big and small challenges in his daily life.

Special economic damages include past and future medical expenses and past and future earnings losses. The past losses are commonly simple to fully substantiate. However, the client's future medical expenses and future earnings losses are always complex in their preparation, recommending a highly sophisticated Florida trial lawyer with substantial experience representing client's who have been seriously injured.

Very quickly, the Florida trial lawyer's task in preparing the evidence of the full measure of his client's future medical expenses begins with identifying a team of experts, including the relevant medical specialists to demonstrate the full nature and extent of the client's serious injuries, diagnoses and prognoses, as well as an outline of the medical care the client will likely require over the course of his life expectancy. Then the Florida trial lawyer will always need to engage a "life care planner" whose obligation it is to communicate extensively with the expert physicians and then consult trade and other journals to determine the dollar amounts of all the big and small medical costs the client will likely require over the remainder of his or her life expectancy, from surgeries, hospitalizations, part time or full time nursing care to drugs and sundries to replacement prostheses and modified vehicles. The Florida serious injury trial attorney will then submit the "life care plan" to a forensic economist who will increase the individual costs by consulting government statistics with regard to the rapidly rising cost of medical care over time, and then will reduce the total to present cash value, applying historical rates of inflation.

The serious injury Florida trial lawyer's task in demonstrating future earnings losses also requires a team of experts, beginning with medical doctors who will define the client's disabilities, and then a "rehabilitation" expert who will consider the reports of the medical experts, speak extensively with the client, obtain his educational records and employment records, arriving at the differential in likely earning capacity before and after the injury through the remainder of his pre-injury work-life expectancy. The Florida trial lawyer will then again engage a forensic economist to increase the wages or salary of the client using government statistics on wage growth in the relevant trades and professions, and then discount the total to present cash value.

The foregoing is only a quick summary of the Florida trial lawyer's task to establish the full measure of the seriously injured client's general and special economic damages. For a more complete discussion, you may consult our "Serious and Catastrophic Injury Lawyers" page. Our serious injury trial lawyers also welcome you to contact us for a free consultation, in which we will be pleased to discuss with you both the evidence of your liability case, whether it be an auto accident or medical malpractice or elder physical abuse case, as well as our availability to consider Florida litigation in our practice areas and specifically our experience in serious injury litigation. Our Florida personal injury lawyers will consider representing seriously injured potential clients throughout the state of Florida from Jacksonville and Miami to Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Hialeah, in Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale and Tallahassee. Any individual case may involve simple or complex liability issues, and the reader may consider below our discussion of complex auto accident, motorcycle and big rig truck accident cases, including our discussion of the opportunities of the Florida auto accident lawyer to overcome the "collectability" issue, our Florida medical malpractice lawyers discuss the complex failure to diagnose case and obstetrical malpractice birth injury litigation. Our Florida product liability lawyers will discuss the complexities involved in pharmaceutical product defect litigation. Our food poisoning lawyers will describe in particular serious illness cases including E. coli and HUS and TTP cases. Our Florida premises liability lawyers will discuss serious slip and fall or trip and fall cases involving defects and failures to maintain commercial, residential and public property. And our Florida elder abuse lawyers will discuss senior physical abuse, neglect, abandonment and elder psychological abuse. Each of these cases, even as simple as the particular facts demonstrating the defendant's liability may be, recommend experienced Florida serious injury lawyer to maximize the opportunity to assure that the client will be fully compensated for his full measure of his general and special economic damages.

Our Florida Auto Accident Lawyers Describe the Common Complexity of Serious Injury Car, Motorcycle and Big Rig Truck Accident Case, Including Overcoming the "Collectability" Hurdle Where the Other Driver's Liability Insurance is Inadequate to Compensate the Full Value of the Client's General and Special Damages, by Identifying the Independently Liable or Vicariously Liable Third Party "Deep Pocket" Defendant. Our Florida Auto Accident Attorneys, Motorcycle Lawyers and Big Rig Truck Accident Attorneys Will Consider Representing Potential Clients from Orlando to Miami, from Jacksonville to Tampa, St. Petersburg and Hialeah, from Ft. Lauderdale to Tallahassee.

As our Florida auto accident lawyers explain in the previous section, while a particular auto accident case may appear to be "simple" on the surface, as where a car driver violates the client's right of way, every serious injury auto accident or motorcycle or big rig truck accident case requires the sophisticated preparation of the client's general and special economic damages. Our Florida motorcycle accident lawyers commonly find that liability is clear, with 75 percent of all multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents occurring solely as the result of the other driver's negligence, 50 percent of the time when another driver pulls out from a side street or turns left from the opposite direction into the motorcyclist's right of way. Motorcycle accidents also commonly involve serious injuries due to the obvious fact that they do not have the same safety engineered cage, interior padding, seat belts and air bags that protect auto drivers. Our Florida big rig truck accident attorneys observe that commonly accidents involving large commercial trucks and big rig trucks will result in serious or catastrophic injuries, again for the obvious reason that the truck is much heavier than the ordinary passenger car. But our auto accident lawyers observe that any accident can result in serious and debilitating injuries.

Where the client suffers serious or catastrophic injury in an auto accident or motorcycle or big rig truck accident, the Florida auto accident lawyer will engage the teams of experts, as discussed in the preceding section, to demonstrate the full nature and extent of the client's injuries and then what may often be his often huge measure of future medical expenses and future earnings losses. Often the auto accident victim's full measure of general and special economic damages may measure in the millions or tens of millions of dollars, as where the client has suffered quadriplegia, paraplegia, other spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injury, TBI, catastrophic orthopedic injuries, debilitating internal injuries or limb amputation.

However, framing the "collectability" challenge that the Florida auto accident lawyer will face, while the client's measure of damages may be provable in the millions or tens of millions of dollars, accounting for his general damages, past and future medical expenses and earnings losses, it is all too common that the driver of the vehicle who caused the accident will have carried only the minimum or minimal auto liability insurance, woefully inadequate to compensate the seriously or catastrophically injured plaintiff for the full measure of his damages.

The serious injury Florida auto accident attorney will then need to identify, wherever possible, proper "deep pocket" defendants, either independently liable or "vicariously liable" for the accident and the plaintiff's injuries. Identifying the independently liable third party defendant will call upon the Florida auto accident lawyer's knowledge of the applicable Florida law, his creativity, and that of his investigators and accident reconstruction experts. Examples of potential independently liable third parties may include a city or the state of Florida for its negligence is constructing the roadway with a defective safety barrier or the negligence of the public entity in failing to timely maintain trees on public property which obscures a driver's vision of a stop sign. The Florida auto accident attorney may also identify a design or manufacturing defect in the other party's car or in the client's car which contributed to the accident, such as brake defect or fulty steering mechanism or a seat belt defective in its design, an air bag which didn't deploy due to a manufacturing defect, or negligence in car's maintenance which causes the vehicle to rapidly accelerate or reduces braking capability.

Florida auto accident lawyers experienced in serious injury motorcycle accident, car and big rig truck accident cases, have available to them also the theories of "vicarious liability" to bring in deep pocket defendants, such as the other party's employer with a large liability or excess insurance policy or umbrella coverage. One example is cited in the left column of this page under "Recent Settlements and Verdicts" in which a motorcyclist lost his left lower leg, but the auto driver carried only the minimum auto liability insurance coverage. In that case it was discovered that the other driver was commuting to work at the time of the accident, however the applicable law was that accidents occurring during an employee's commute to work did not result in the employer's vicarious liability. The Group auto accident lawyer discovered however, that the other driver was carrying tools in the back of his truck at the time of the accident, and on that basis was able to establish that the other driver was operating his vehicle in the course and scope of his employment, permitting the motorcycle accident attorney to name the employer as a defendant and recover the multimillion dollar value of the client's full measure of damages.

There are a number of ways in which the sophisticated Florida auto accident lawyer can creatively establish the evidence to sue the employer under vicarious liability theory. One such strategy is discussed in the lower left hand column of this page, and on a page of this site, the link to which you can find by putting your cursor over "auto accident lawyers" in the Practice Areas menu. In the respect relevant here it describes the auto accident attorney's pre-trial discovery opportunities to obtain the other drivers cell phone records and take the deposition of the driver to determine whether he was engaged in business related cell conversation as a basis to asset that he was operating his vehicle in the course and scope of his employment. Currently 10 percent of the drivers on our American roadways are engaged in cell conversation at any given daylight moment in time, an ever increasing number involved in conversation related to their employment, calling the office or to set up an appointment with a client, and with 25 percent of all accidents involving drivers distracted by cell conversation, our Florida serious injury auto accident attorneys consider it worthwhile to investigate whether the other driver was operating his vehicle in the course and scope of his employment if it can mean that we will be able to obtain for the client his full measure of general and special damages.

In large commercial truck cases and big rig truck accident cases, the challenge for the big rig truck accident lawyer again is that the injuries suffered in the accidents will often be serious or catastrophic, from traumatic brain injury, TBI, to serious spinal cord injuries, quadriplegia or paraplegia, debilitating internal injuries, serious orthopedic injuries and limb amputations, given the disparity in weight between the big rig truck and the motorcycle or passenger car. Yet federal law requires that the driver of the truck engaged in interstate commerce must carry only $750,000, and the drivers commonly carry no more than $1,000,000 in liability coverage, again inadequate to pay the full measure of the seriously injured client's general and special economic damages.

Complicating the assertion of vicarious liability on the trucking company or shipper is that they commonly attempt to insulate themselves from liability for their drivers' negligence and the injuries they cause, including by hiring the truck drivers as "independent contractors." Florida big rig truck accident lawyers must be well versed in the applicable federal and state law governing the responsibilities of the truck driver and the shippers or trucking companies that hire them, from the logs the drivers must keep of their driving and rest periods, to the weight of permissible loads and securing of the loads. Where the trucking company or shipper overloads the truck or fails to properly secure the load, it may be held independently liable for an accident, for example, where the truck jackknifes as the result, causing the serious injuries of the big rig truck accident lawyer's client.

Experienced Florida big rig truck accident lawyers will also have knowledge of the theories upon which a trucking company or shipper may be held liable, including "negligent supervision" and "negligent entrustment." Taking the example of an overloaded or improperly secured truck, the trucking company may be held liable to pay for the accident and injuries sustained under negligent supervision theory where the trucking company negligently failed to supervise the loading. Florida big rig truck accident lawyers also have available all of the discovery opportunities to obtain the trucking company's records, including the trucker's personal file, which will commonly disclose evidence sufficient to establish the shipper's "negligent entrustment," as where it is found that the driver had a history of amphetamine drug abuse, common among long haul drivers, or where the driver lacked the appropriate class of license, or had a history of traffic violations. It is indeed common that the sophisticated Florida big rig truck accident lawyer will be able to establish the independent or vicarious liability of the trucking company or shipper, permitting the attorney to obtain for his client the full measure of his general and special damages.

The legal knowledge and the creativity and hard work of the serious injury Florida big rig truck accident lawyer in establishing the liability of the trucking company or shipper which has attempted to avoid liability by hiring the truckers as independent contractors can be the Florida big rig truck accident attorney's greatest contribution to his seriously injured client's full recovery for his injury and full spectrum of general and special economic damages.

Our Florida auto accident lawyers, motorcycle attorneys and big rig truck accident lawyers will consider representing those who have been seriously injured in accident throughout the state of Florida from Tallahassee to Ft. Lauderdale, from Hialeah to St. Petersburg, from Jacksonville to Tampa, and from Orlando to Miami. We will consider representing potential clients who have been rendered quadriplegic or paraplegic or who have suffered other spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, TBI, internal injuries, orthopedic injury, arm and leg amputation.

If you were seriously injured in an auto, motorcycle or big rig truck accident, our Florida auto accident lawyers invite you to contact us for a free consultation. Our Florida car, motorcycle and big rig truck accident attorneys will provide you with an initial case evaluation and recommendations. We are here to serve you.

Our Florida Premises Liability Lawyers Discuss the Challenges of Serious Injury "Slip and Fall" and "Trip and Fall" Cases, and Our Approach to Establishing Liability Against Residential and Commercial Property Owners as Well as Governmental Entities for Defects or Failures to Maintain Public Property. Our Florida Premises Liability Attorneys Will Consider Representing the Seriously Injured Throughout the State of Florida, from Jacksonville to Orlando and Miami, from Tampa to St. Petersburg and Tallahasee, from Hialeah to Ft. Lauderdale.

Premises liability cases involve falls resulting in injury, most commonly the result of the property owner's failure to reasonably maintain the property although often liability can be asserted on the basis of a property defect present from the time of its construction. Premises liability lawyers are sometimes described colloquially as "slip and fall attorneys" or "trip and fall lawyers." Our Florida premises liability lawyers represent those seriously injured in falls on commercial, residential and public property. Falls can result in traumatic brain injury, TBI, serious spinal cord injury such as quadriplegia and paraplegia, serious orthopedic injury, and can result in limb amputation. Demonstrating the liability of the property owner can be simple or complex, however ALL serious and catastrophic injury premises liability cases are complex requiring that the Florida premises liability lawyer obtain teams of experts to present the client's general and special economic damages, including his future medical expenses likely to be incurred over the course of his remaining life expectancy, and his future earnings losses likely to be suffered over his work life expectancy.

Our Florida premises liability lawyers invite you to consider our premises liability page listed in the Practice Areas menu at the top of the left column, where we discuss establishing the liability of the residential and commercial property owner and public entities responsible for the construction and maintenance of public property. Our Florida premises liability attorneys also recommend our Serious and Catastrophic Injury page, where we discuss more fully the complexity involved in preparing and presenting the seriously injured client's general and special economic damages. Regardless of the complexity of establishing the property owner's liability for the defect or failure to maintain the property, every serious injury premises liability case is complex in its presentation of the injury and damage evidence to assure that the client will be compensated for his full measure of general and special economic damages. Regardless of the simplicity of establishing liability in many premises case, the complexity of establishing the various elements of damages in serious or catastrophic injury cases recommends that the client consider retaining qualified premises liability lawyers with substantial experience in serious injury litigation.

Our Florida premises liability attorneys offer free consultations. You may submit the Contact form and one of our serious injury premises liability lawyers will contact you to discuss your case, offer our initial case evaluation and recommendations. Our premises liability lawyers will consider serious injury cases involving falls on residential, commercial and public property throughout the state of Florida, from Miami to Jacksonville, Tampa and St. Petersburg, from Orlando to Hialeah, Ft. Lauderdale and Tallahassee. Our Florida premises liability lawyers will consider cases involving serious and catastrophic injuries. We invite you to inquire about our credentials in premises liability and our experience in prosecuting serious and catastrophic injury cases. The potential client should always want to consider the credentials and experience of any lawyer whom he would consider to represent him, and our Florida premises liability lawyers welcome you to inquire about ours.

Our Florida Medical Malpractice Lawyers Will Describe The Range of Physician, Hospital and Health Care Provider Negligence, and Will Discuss Specifically Failure to Diagnose the Rare Disease and Our Particular Interest in Obstetrical Malpractice Birth Injury Cases. Our Medical Malpractice Attorneys Will Consider Representing Potential Clients Who Have Suffered Injury or Debility as the Result of Below Standard Care and Treatment Throughout Florida in Jacksonville and Miami, St. Petersburg, Tampa, Hialeah, Ft. Lauderdale, Tallahassee and Orlando.

Florida medical malpractice lawyers generally do not specialize in a particular type of case, rather they must be capable and willing to learn the medical subject matter involved in each new case, which can vary from the physician's failure to accurately diagnose the client's disease, failures to promptly use the standard of care modalities of treatment, though surgical errors, or anesthesiologist errors leading to brain damage and serious lifelong disability. Cases within every category of medical, hospital and health care provider negligence can vary widely with each new case. Obstetrical malpractice cases, as an example, vary widely in the medical basis for holding the obstetrician or hospital liable. The baby might suffer brain damage due to anoxia resulting from the obstetrician's or hospital staff's failure to timely hook up the fetal heart monitor or failure to notice the baby's fetal distress. There are standards of care that apply when an obstetrician is confronted with shoulder dystocia, when one of the baby's arms caught, accepted mechanisms to manipulate the baby to avoid Erb's Palsy. In one case discussed in the left column of this page under "Recent Verdicts and Settlements" the physicians and radiologists failed to diagnose a diaphragmatic hernia, their delay in diagnosis resulting in the loss of most of the baby's small bowel, resulting in the medical necessity that the child receive its sustenance for her entire life by expensive parenteral nutrition.

Our Florida medical malpractice lawyers therefore must be good learners. The medical negligence attorney will obtain the medical records and forward them to a highly qualified medical specialist for his or her review. The medical experts are indeed crucial as the medical malpractice lawyer's educators. They will identify the failures of the physicians to comply with the "standard of care" in the prompt diagnosis of the patient's disease or in the care or treatment the physician provided to the client. He will explain how the failure to diagnose or failure to timely treat the client's disease was a substantial factor in causing the client's injury, the progression of the disease and worsened prognosis. The relationship of the Florida medical malpractice lawyer and his experts will continue through the time of trial, as the attorney takes the depositions of the defendant physicians or hospital staff or other health care providers. The Florida medical malpractice attorney will review with the expert the defendant physicians explanations for their decisions as they consult on how best to demonstrate the insincerity of the defendant physicians' explanations, or arrive at alternative strategies to demonstrate the negligence of the physician in departing from the applicable standard of care, accepting for purposes of argument the physician's reasons for his departure.

In one medical malpractice case discussed in the left hand column of this page, the patient presented to an internist with a history of two feinting spells, the internist did a battery of tests failing to identify a medical cause for the patient's feinting and so he sent her across to a neurologist who also did a battery of tests again unable to diagnose a medical cause for the feinting. The physicians concluded that the feinting spells likely had a psychological etiology. The patient then had a stroke, was admitted to the hospital, where ultimately it was discovered that she had a rare tumor in the upper left chamber of her heart that was flipping off emboli that passed the ventricle and aorta into the vascular servicing the patient's brain. The "atrial myxoma" was indeed a rare disease, one that most cardiologists would never have heard of, its having been described in case studies in the literature only a few times. But the medical experts engaged by the medical malpractice lawyer opined that the internist and neurologist should have considered other, more common cardiac entities that might have accounted for the patient's feinting. And if the defendant physicians had only done an echocardiogram to rule out these other more common cardiologic entities, they would have seen the atrial myxoma. In the discussion of the case in the left column of this page we describe the medical malpractice lawyer's superior advocacy, adopting the defendant doctor's syllogism involving hoof beats, horses and zebras. The syllogism was effective in simplifying and making plain the physician's negligence. Also reported in the left column is the multimillion dollar jury verdict the medical malpractice lawyer obtained.

In many cases the credentials of the experts that the Florida medical malpractice lawyer assembles to testify to the negligence of the physician, hospital or health care provider will determine the outcome of medical malpractice case presented to a jury. One reason is that while the medical testimony may be difficult for a jury to fully appreciate, jurors are very capable of assessing the relative strength of the credentials of the medical experts testifying for the plaintiff and defendant physicians. In another medical malpractice case discussed in the left column of this page we describe the stellar experts engaged to testify for 5 clients whose cases were consolidated in one trial. As we trust that the reader will appreciate from their credentials, they were indeed 20 of the most highly regarded physicians and scientists in the world on the subject of their testimony.

Our Florida medical malpractice attorneys will consider cases involving serious injuries or debility resulting from physician, hospital and health care provider negligence. Our medical malpractice lawyers will consider the broadest categories of medical negligence cases involving physician failures to adhere to the accepted standards of medical care and treatment throughout the state of Florida, from Jacksonville and Miami to Orlando and Tampa, from St. Petersburg to Ft. Lauderdale, from Hialeah to Tallahassee. We are serious injury Florida medical negligence lawyers experienced in preparing and presenting our clients' general and special damages, including future medical expense claims and loss of earnings claims, also a complex task involving teams of additional experts, the trial lawyer's strategies and advocacy to maximize the opportunities to assure that the client is fully compensated for his injury, general damages and special economic damages. You may review our discussion too of our approach to Serious and Catastrophic Injury cases.

If you have been seriously injured as the result of the negligence of a physician, hospital staff or other health care provider, we welcome you to submit our "Contact" form and one of our experienced medical malpractice lawyers also experienced in serious and catastrophic injury cases will call you to provide our initial case evaluation and recommendations. You should consider the credentials of any Florida medical malpractice lawyer whom you would consider to represent you, and our Florida medical negligence attorneys are pleased to answer any questions you may have as to ours.

Our Florida Product Liability Lawyers Discuss The Range of Product Defect Cases Including Pharmaceutical Product Liability Litigation and Class Action. Our Florida Product Liability Attorneys Will Consider Representing Those Seriously Injured As the Result of a Product Defect in Miami, Jacksonville, Tampa, St. Petersburg, from Hialeah to Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale and Tallahassee and Throughout the State of Florida.

Florida product liability lawyers commonly will prosecute cases as widely varied as there are defective products, from infant toys with detachable parts that can get caught in the child's air passages that can tragically lead to brain damage or death, through defects in industrial machinery lacking appropriate safety equipment that can result in the worker's loss of a hand or arm. Design defects in cars can result in rapid acceleration, or a manufacturing defect in a tire might cause the car to spin out of control, resulting in auto accidents in which the occupant and passengers are seriously injured or others injured or killed. Florida pharmaceutical product liability lawyers will try the most complex of product cases, involving side effects of a drug which can lead to serious injury sometimes affecting many thousands.

Where a product is widely distributed, leading to the serious injury of hundreds or thousands, class action may be available to try the manufacturer's liability, and often such litigation will lead also to class settlements with the opportunity for the Florida product liability lawyer to opt his client into the voluntary class if he sees it in his client's best interest. .Some product liability lawyers will only represent clients in class actions while others, including our Florida product liability attorneys, are fully capable of preparing the most complex of product liability cases to try independently, including pharmaceutical product liability cases. In the left column of this page under the title "Recent Verdicts and Settlements" you will find referred to a number of product liability and drug defect cases successfully settled or tried to successful conclusion. You may also consider our product liability and pharmaceutical product liability pages on this web site, links to these "Practice Areas" pages found in the upper left of this page.

Our Group product defect attorneys have been at the forefront in establishing product liability law. In one case described in the right column of this page one of our Group product liability lawyers had 40 drug product birth defect cases filed in the state courts. The federal Panel on Multi-District Litigation sent more than 1000 similar pharmaceutical product liability cases which had been filed in the federal courts to the federal District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The District Court Judge certified a "mandatory class action," purporting to join all cases filed nationally, whether filed in the federal courts or state courts, and whether or not the attorneys in those case or their clients wanted to pursue their cases in the mandatory class action. The Plaintiff's Lead Council Committee and the attorneys for the drug manufacturer reached a settlement of all cases nationwide for the sum of $120,000,000 which the District Court Judge approved. For our Group drug product liability attorney and his firm members the class settlement grossly undervalued the serious birth defects sustained by the thousands of plaintiffs nationwide, most of them children born with severe limb defects as the result of the teratogenic drug having been promoted, prescribed and taken for nausea during the first trimester of their mothers' pregnancy.

On behalf of one client the Group pharmaceutical product liability lawyer petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to order the District Court Judge to vacate his certification of the mandatory class and void the settlement, arguing that the certification of the mandatory class denied his client the right to the attorney of his choice and control over his individual product liability litigation. The Court granted our Group product liability lawyer's petition for writ of mandamus, ordering the District Court Judge to vacate the order certifying the class action and to void the settlement. In this landmark decision the United States Court of Appeals upheld the rights of individual clients to select the attorneys of their choice and control their individual litigation. The Court of Appeals adopted the Group product liability lawyer's arguments, holding that henceforth mandatory class action will be unavailable except in the rare case in which the manufacturer can demonstrate a limited fund of assets and insurance insufficient to compensate all members of the class. The Opinion of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals effected a lasting change in the law so that now litigants injured as the result of mass torts, including product liability and pharmaceutical defect litigation have the choice whether to "opt in" or "opt out" of class actions.

Our Florida product liability lawyers are qualified and experienced in prosecuting individual product defect cases, including the most complex pharmaceutical product liability litigation. Our Florida product liability attorneys will consider representing those seriously injured as the result of the full panoply of product cases. Our product liability lawyers will consider representing those injured as the result of product design, manufacturing and warning defects throughout the state of Florida from Orlando to Miami to Jacksonville and Tampa, from St. Petersburg to Hialeah, Tallahassee and Fort Lauderdale. Our Florida product liability lawyers and pharmaceutical defect attorneys will consider representing our clients in class actions and in individually prosecuted product liability cases. We are serious injury product liability attorneys also experienced in presenting our seriously or catastrophically injured clients' complex general and special economic damages both in class action and in the individual Florida product liability case. Every potential litigant should want to ask about the credentials of any Florida product liability lawyer whom he would consider to represent him, and our Florida product defect lawyers and pharmaceutical product liability lawyers welcome you to ask about our credentials and experience.

You may contact us for a free consultation. If you submit the "Contact" form one of our Florida product liability lawyers will call you to discuss your case, offer you our initial case evaluation and recommendations, and answer any questions you may have about our experience as product defect attorneys and serious injury trial lawyers.

Our Florida Elder Abuse Lawyers Will Discuss Senior Physical Abuse, and Distinguish Elder Neglect and Abandonment Cases, Senior Psychological Abuse and Elder Financial Abuse. Our Florida Elder Abuse Attorneys Will Consider Representing Seniors in Lawsuits Against Retirement Homes Convalescent Centers and Nursing Homes Throughout the State of Florida from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, from Miami to Ft. Lauderdale, from Tampa to St. Petersburg and from Orlando to Hialeah.

Our Florida elder abuse lawyers will consider the breadth of elder physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, senior psychological abuse and elder financial abuse cases throughout the state of Florida from Jacksonville and Miami, Tampa, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Hialeah, Tallahassee and St. Petersburg against retirement facilities, convalescent centers and nursing homes. Below our Florida elder abuse lawyers will distinguish the categories of elder abuse including elder neglect and abandonment, and provide some suggestions for seniors and their families to consider in remaining alert to elder physical abuse, psychological and financial abuse. You may also consider our elder abuse page for a more complete discussion.

As our Florida elder abuse lawyers define it, elder physical abuse generally involves intentional or malicious or willful physical abuse commonly manifest in beatings and slapping, although it can also involve the staff of retirement or nursing homes applying unnecessary physical restrains, it can involve the denial of essential food or water, and occasionally can involve elder sexual abuse by employees of convalescent centers or nursing homes. Our Florida elder abuse attorneys make the sad observation that often times it is our experience that the senior may endure overt physical abuse such as beatings or humiliating slapping sometimes for years, not telling family members out of fear that the retirement home or nursing facility staff will retaliate, staff upon whom the senior must rely for his daily sustenance, medical care, drugs and freedom to interact with others. Our Florida elder abuse lawyers recommend that family be alert to the signs that their loved one may be the subject of senior physical abuse, including by asking about cuts and bruises on the senior's body, which might be caused by beatings or restraints, and then be alert to retirement home or convalescent facility staff members who hover around the senior during family visits or who appear cold or even overly affectionate to the senior while family is present.

Our "Florida elder abuse lawyers define elder neglect as the retirement home convalescent center or nursing home's negligent failure to fulfill its duty to provide for the senior's physical and psychological welfare, or in its negligent failure to protect the senior from hazards to his safety. Our Florida elder abuse attorneys define elder abandonment as requiring an intention or wilfulness or malice on the part of the staff of a nursing home or retirement facility to provide all that may be necessary for the senior's physical and psychological welfare, including medical and psychological care and treatment and protection from safety hazards. Our Florida elder abuse lawyers urge families to be alert to their loved one's physical, medical and psychological needs and determine whether those needs are being met. Be alert to uncharacteristic depression and other changes in the senior's medical and psychological condition. Consider whether your loved one is exposed hazards at the retirement facility or nursing home that endanger your loved one given his or her physical limitations and vulnerabilities.

Our Florida elder abuse lawyers consider elder psychological abuse as involving the intent on the part of employees of retirement homes or convalescent centers or malice or wilfulness on their part to cause fear or intimidation or humiliation in the senior. The nursing home staff member may make threats against the senior, sometimes in the experience of our Florida elder abuse attorneys, appearing capricious, without reason other than meanness, other times perhaps motivated as retaliation against the senior for the employee's having to provide some aspect of care to the senior, or intended to modify the senior's behavior, such as incontinence, medically out of the senior's control. Again, the family should be alert to changes in their loved one's mental state, such as depression, ask your loved one what troubles him or her, and whether he or she enjoys the activities at the retirement facility or if he or she has been physically restrained unnecessarily or isolated from others, and again, don't just take the senior's denial of staff intimidation or humiliation as necessarily accurate, rather look for signs of psychological abuse in the manner in which the retirement facility or nursing home staff treat your loved one, but again you must be suspicious of the overly affectionate employee or the staff member who insists on being present when you are visiting your loved one.

Senior financial abuse as our Florida elder abuse would define it can include the theft of the senior's expensive personal property such as jewelry by retirement home or nursing facility staff, and can involve obtaining the senior's signature on checks which staff may deposit into their accounts or cash at the senior's bank. Senior financial abuse can be perpetrated by fly by night con men or telemarketers who prey on the elderly. Sometimes our Florida elder abuse lawyers will find that it is the senior's fiduciaries, his conservators or attorneys or others with power of attorney or stockbrokers who will wrongfully obtain the senior's money or property or financial instruments. Sometimes one family member or friend may assert undue influence over the senior, convincing him to make gifts of property including real property or sell property for less than the market value, or change his will to provide a greater portion of the senior's wealth to the overreaching family member or friend. Family members should offer to help the senior monitor his bank accounts and stock portfolios, and be alert to transfers of interests in real property. The family should be diligent to do so regularly and frequently to be assured of notice of withdrawals or transfers while there still may be time to avoid the dissipation of the senior's assets.

Our Florida elder abuse lawyers will consider representing seniors who have suffered serious physical abuse, neglect, abandonment, psychological abuse or financial abuse throughout the state of Florida. You may submit the "Contact" form and one of our experienced Florida elder abuse attorneys will call you promptly to discuss your case, provide our initial case evaluation and recommendations. We invite you to ask us about our attorney credentials and experience in prosecuting serious elder abuse cases. You should want to ask any lawyer whom you would consider to represent you in your case about his credentials and experience as a Florida elder abuse attorney. We will be pleased to answer any questions you may ask about our credentials.

Our Florida Food Poisoning Attorneys Discuss Individual and Outbreak Cases, Using as the Example E. coli Contamination in Restaurants and as a Bacterium That Can Result in Food Poisoning Outbreaks Where the Food Product is Contaminated at the Location Where it is Grown, Processed or Manufactured, And Distributed to Large Populations. Our Florida Food Poisoning Lawyers will Consider Cases Arising Throughout the State of Florida, from Miami to Tallahassee, in Jacksonville, Tampa and Orlando, from Ft. Lauderdale to St. Petersburg and Hialeah.

Our Florida food poisoning lawyers will consider both individual cases in which the potential client has suffered serious illness as the result of food contamination and "outbreak" cases in which hundreds are rendered ill. Food poisoning can occur in an individual or small group of people as where improper food management or sanitation may result in contamination in a restaurant. Food poisoning can result in an outbreak of illness, when the food product is contaminated at the location where the food is grown or processed or manufactured, and then distributed widely, or incorporated into the products of many different food manufacturers, and then distributed to grocery stores often in many states.

Examples of food contamination that can result in serious illness include E coli, Salmonella, Listeria, Botulism, Purpura, Campylobacter, Norovirus and Shigella. The individual bacterial contaminants can often result in very serious illness and sometimes death. A discussion of all of the most common food products that can be contaminated with each of these bacteria and the symptoms and potentially serious outcomes of each of these illnesses is beyond our Florida food poisoning lawyers page limit here, however our food poisoning attorneys invite you to consult our food poisoning page, listed in the "Practice Areas" menu in the top left column of this page.

To take the first example of E. coli illness, two of the most serious consequences are Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, HUS, and Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, TTP. As our Florida food poisoning lawyers are quick to clarify, it is a specific strain of E. coli that results in human illness, specifically E. coli O157:H7, the alphanumeric designation referring to the strain's surface genetic markers accounting for its toxicity. Other strains of E.coli exist benignly, including in our stomachs, and are indeed essential to our survival. In the experience of our Florida food poisoning attorneys, and as verified by our research, E. coli O157:H7 will most commonly result in only relatively mild symptoms of limited duration, such as abdominal pain and cramps, or hemorrhagic colitis which may be apparent in bloody stools. The symptoms generally develop 3 to 4 days following ingestion of the E. coli O157:H7 contaminated food product and generally the symptoms run their course within 5 to 10 days without long term or permanent health consequences.

In some cases, however, exposure to E. coli O157:H7, through the ingestion of unpasteurized milk or juice or contaminated ground beef or salami, or vegetable products such as sprouts or lettuce or spinach, as examples, can result in very serious illness, such as HUS, Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome, and TTP, Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, which can have severe long term consequences. In our Florida food poisoning attorneys experience, HUS often will result in acute renal failure, some will not survive and others will require kidney dialysis treatment, often for the remainder of their lives. Where the individual exposed to E. coli O157:H7 develops TTP, Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, our Florida food poisoning lawyers find that the patient can develop symptoms and disease similar to those who develop HUS, however, in TTP cases the patient may also suffer severe neurological consequences including stroke.

In the left hand column, under "Recent Jury Verdicts and Settlements" a case involving E. coli food poisoning is discussed in which the client ingested the E. coli contaminated food as the result of a restaurant's improper food management, resulting in the client's developing HUS. Our Group food poisoning lawyer obtained one of the largest settlements ever reported in an E. coli HUS case.

Individual food poisoning cases are extremely complicated, requiring the Florida attorney with a background in prosecuting food poisoning litigation to establish that the client developed his illness as the result of having consumed contaminated food at the particular restaurant, which can be difficult given that the symptoms of E. coli illness, to take the same example, generally don't develop until 3 to 4 days following ingestion of the contaminated food, several meals intervening between the exposure and first symptoms. In many cases, the lawyer will also need to investigate the restaurant's policies and practices that might have led to the contamination. In the above referenced case our distinguished Group food poisoning lawyer and highly regarded trial attorney took the course in food management and was "certified" as a food manager, not so he could manage a restaurant, rather so he would know all of the applicable laws and regulations governing the subject, so that he could be sure to identify every variance from required food management practice to assure every opportunity for success in the litigation.

In outbreak cases, such as the 2006 outbreak of E. coli illness affecting hundreds in 25 states, the food poisoning lawyer is aided by the involvement of the FDA and CDC which will commonly take the laboring oar in tracking down the source of the contamination, be it the grower or food processor and establish from retained samples of the food product that it was indeed contaminated with the particular bacteria resulting in the widespread illness. The 2006 outbreak resulted from spinach contaminated at the location at which it was grown, the spinach was then sold to other food product manufacturers who incorporated it into their products which were then shipped to grocery stores in half the states, resulting in widespread E. coli illness, including several deaths. In 2009, in response to a large outbreak of Salmonella food poisoning, the FDA and CDC issued its broadest recall of food products ever when it was discovered that peanut byproducts, contaminated at a Peanut Corporation of America processing plant, were sold to numerous food manufacturers and incorporated into products as diverse as energy bars, cookies, crackers and ice cream.

Where the Florida food poisoning lawyer has access to the investigations conducted by the FDA and CDC this can be very helpful to establish the liability of the responsible grower or food processor and all those further down the line in the chain of commerce who distributed the contaminated food down to the retailer that sold it, for example, on its grocery store shelves. However, even in outbreak cases, the preparation and presentation of the client's general and special economic damages will be complex, recommending a Florida food poisoning lawyer who is also experienced in serious injury litigation. In the HUS and TTP case as examples there may be enormous future medical expenses, requiring a team of experts from the medical experts to the "life care planner" to the forensic economist essential to present just the future medical expenses, and if the client's earning capacity has been impaired then another team of experts will be required. In terms of the complexity of all that is required to properly prepare the seriously ill client's general and special economic damages, please consider our "Serious and Catastrophic Injury Lawyers" page. All Florida food poisoning cases are complex, recommending attorneys who are both well qualified in food poisoning litigation but also those who are experienced in prosecuting serious and catastrophic injury cases.

Our Florida food poisoning lawyers will consider representing potential clients who have suffered serious food poisoning illness throughout the state of Florida, from Miami to Tallahassee, from Jacksonville to Ft. Lauderdale, from Tampa to St. Petersburg, from Hialeah to Orlando.

We offer free consultations. Simply submit the "Contact" form and one of our Florida food poisoning lawyers will call you to discuss your case, provide our initial case evaluation and recommendations.