Personal Injury

The state of Florida has a four-year statute of limitations on personal injury cases. This means you have four years from the date of your injury to file a claim or you may lose your right to compensation. There are some exceptions to this rule including if the injury victim was declared mentally incapacitated at the time of the accident. In this case, they would have up to seven years to file a claim depending on the circumstances. A second exception is if the defendant leaves the state or intentionally tries to hide their identity in order to prevent a claim from being filed against them. In both of these cases, the statute of limitations can be extended, to what length depends on the specifics of your situation.

There are three main categories of compensation an injury victim can pursue in a personal injury case, also called damages, which are economic, non-economic and punitive damages. Economic damages, as the name suggests compensates for financial losses associated with sustaining an injury such as medical bills, future medical expenses, and the inability to work. Non-economic damages, on the other hand, compensate for more abstract losses such as mental anguish, emotional distress, and pain and suffering. Since non-economic damages compensate for losses that are not easily quantifiable, they are also called general damages. Punitive damages are different from both economic and non-economic in that their main purpose is to punish the defendant. As such they are not awarded very often.