Law Firms in Lakeland, FL

Hiring a lawyer in Lakeland: what is different

Two changes in March 2023 reshaped what an injury claim in Florida is worth and how long you have to bring it. House Bill 837 cut the deadline for a negligence action from four years to two, and it replaced pure comparative negligence with a modified version: a claimant found more than 50 per cent at fault now recovers nothing at all, where before they recovered what was left after their share. Medical negligence is the exception and keeps the old rule. If you were told four years by somebody remembering how this worked, they are remembering a law that changed.

Lakeland cases are not heard in Lakeland. Polk County sits in the Tenth Judicial Circuit, whose courthouse is in Bartow, about fifteen miles south, alongside Hardee and Highlands counties. A firm that is in that building weekly knows its judges and its calendars, and an office on Florida Avenue is not the same thing as appearing in Bartow.

The fourteen days that decide your medical bills

Florida is a no-fault state. Every driver carries $10,000 of Personal Injury Protection, and it pays 80 per cent of reasonable medical expenses, but only if you receive initial care within fourteen days of the crash. Miss that window and the coverage you paid for pays nothing toward treatment, whoever caused the collision. It is the single most expensive deadline in Florida injury law and it is the one nobody is told about at the scene.

Stepping outside no-fault to claim pain and suffering needs more than bills. Section 627.737 allows it only where there is significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, permanent injury within a reasonable degree of medical probability, significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or death. That threshold, rather than the severity of the crash, is usually what decides whether a claim is worth bringing.

Deadlines that catch Floridians out

• Personal injury: two years from the accident, under Florida Statutes § 95.11(5)(a). It was four years until March 2023.
• Wrongful death: two years, under § 95.11(5)(e).
• PIP medical care: fourteen days from the crash to receive initial treatment, or the $10,000 pays nothing toward it.
• Professional malpractice other than medical: two years from the day it was discovered or should have been.