After you return home following a Slip and Fall Accident or any accident while visiting Miami, you may be uncertain of which lawyer to retain or even if you should hire a personal injury lawyer. Let me tell you something that can help you win your injury case:
You should not give a tape recorded or written statement to the insurance adjuster unless an experienced personal injury lawyer from Miami (Or anywhere in Florida but preferably one located close to South Florida) is on the phone with you during the interview. There are many laws that affect your case and you need to go over your testimony carefully with your lawyer BEFORE you talk to the insurance adjuster about the facts of how you were injured. For example, Florida has a Comparative Negligence Law that provides that the Miami business where you slipped and fell does not owe you money damages for that part of the injury that is considered to be your fault. To understand this requires experience from handling many of these cases. The insurance representative is looking to apply this law based upon what you say to him or her and will deny any payment on your case if they think they can win with this law.
Local Miami Lawyers for Slip & Fall Cases
A local Miami Lawyer such as attorney Jack Bernstein (I have personally written this article based on my own experience) who handled personal injury slip and fall accident cases for twenty-seven years has knowledge of the slip and fall accident laws that affect your case. For example, we are can request copies of maintenance records to determine how often floors are cleaned, how long it had been before the area was cleaned, or if there is a video of the accident. Of crucial importance is the four-year statute of limitation to bring a Miami slip and fall accident case in court. (There can be shorter time limits if the case is against various state or Federal Government entities) After four years you are barred from receiving money for your Miami slip and fall accident case. There are hospital lien laws that apply to a Miami slip and fall accident that require payment to the hospital and specific requirements for the liens to apply.
At Bernstein and Maryanoff, we file our own lawsuits in the Miami Dade County Circuit Court for Visitors who have a Miami slip and fall accident. Our staff of four experienced Miami personal injury lawyers negotiates our own cases. If they don’t settle we do not refer your Miami Slip and Fall Accident case to another law office to file the slip and fall accident lawsuit. We file it ourselves. That is important because the insurance adjusters know our reputation for filing our own lawsuits for Visitors to Miami injured in a Slip and fall Accident and know that we will not have to “divide” our legal fees with another law firm if it becomes necessary to file a suit on your case. The insurance companies know they will have to pay the maximum settlement to you for your personal injuries from the Miami slip and fall accident when we handle your case.
If you were hurt while visiting Miami in a slip and fall accident and in need of medical care, and possibly without health insurance, we will sign a letter of protection with a doctor near your house to for you to receive medical care and await the personal injury settlement before paying the medical office.
We will email you our forms to allow us to represent you for your slip and fall accident while visiting Miami. They are simple information forms. You can fax, mail, or email them back. We will email you the easy instructions to help you fill them out. We will assign a case manager and one of the Miami slip and fall personal injury Lawyers on staff. The lawyer Jack Bernstein with over twenty-seven years as a personal injury lawyer will help make sure you obtain the highest money damage recovery under the facts and injuries.
You should immediately seek the advice of an experienced Miami Slip and fall Accident lawyer such as Jack Bernstein of Bernstein and Maryanoff who has handled slip and accident cases for more than twenty-seven years. Slip and Fall insurance companies hire licensed insurance adjusters to handle the claim processing for your Miami Slip and fall accident case. The insurance adjuster will be trying to protect the insurance company or business, and not to represent you, the Miami slip and fall accident victim. The slip and fall accident insurance adjusters goal on a slip and fall accident claim for a person injured while visiting Miami is to pay as little as possible or to pay nothing at all and deny the claim. They are interested in maximizing company profit and not in giving a Miami slip and fall accident victim the most compensation or in trying to get you the best medical help. Their want to pay you the least money they can. It is important to hire a local Miami Lawyer such as Jack Bernstein who is familiar with the insurance companies and fighting for the those visitors to Miami that are injured in a slip and fall or any accident.
Trying to handle your own bodily injury claim is not a good idea. It also is not in your best interest to rush into a settlement after a slip and fall accident in Miami. If you are in pain, you should go to a doctor who handles a lot of slip and fall accident and other injury victim trauma cases. You should receive medical care, therapy, chiropractic care and care as your physician(s) determine based upon your injuries. Some injuries (such as nerve injuries) get progressively worse, rather than improving. Physicians and Chiropractors trained in handling slip and fall accident injuries will order an MRI or CT Scan to diagnose structural injuries such as herniated or bulging discs which need more invasive medical help to heal such as injections or surgery. There are nerve injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome or brain injuries from head trauma that sometimes develop over the months following an accident. Do not rush to sign a release and settle your Miami slip and fall accident case. The law will not allow you to go back to the insurance adjuster and get more money after you sign the release even if your injuries turn out to be far worse than you believed at the time of settlement.
Normally a doctor will require payment when medical care is received. Having to make payment for medical care following a slip and fall accident where you might find yourself unable to work can be impossible when you are injured. Our will contact your doctor and help you find a physicians office close to your house. Our lawyers will sign a letter of protection allowing you to postpone payment to the doctor until the insurance settlement for the slip and fall accident in Miami. MRI and CT Scan centers, orthopedic doctors, and other medical offices will normally give you medical care and wait to get paid until your personal injury case is resolved.
Experienced Slip & Fall Attorneys
An important reason you need an experienced lawyer like Jack Bernstein who handles Miami slip and fall accident cases is that he and the lawyers on his staff will sign the letter of protection and the doctor will trust his office to pay their charges out of the money recovered. It is a requirement of the rules governing Miami Personal Injury Lawyers for the lawyer to honor the doctor’s letter of protection. Without a Miami Personal Injury Lawyer, the medical provider does not have the same level of protection since the patient is not bound by the rules of Professional Ethics. The doctor would have to file a lawsuit against you if they did not get paid out of the settlement money. Doctors will usually treat you for your slip and fall accident injuries with an experienced Lawyer such as Jack Bernstein since they are used to doing this on accident cases where a settlement is obtained after the medical care is completed.
Funding companies that will loan money to a visitor to Miami who had a slip and fall accident will do so only when there is a lawyer handling the Miami slip and fall accident case who agrees to pay the loan back at the time of settlement. The rules governing Miami Personal Injury Lawyers require them to pay the loan back out of the settlement. Without a personal injury lawyer such as Jack Bernstein, the loan company would have to file a lawsuit against you to recover their loan at the time of settlement if you did not voluntarily pay them back, and they won’t do that.
I cannot stress strongly enough the importance of hiring a local Miami Slip and Fall Accident lawyer such as Jack Bernstein. Consider that the insurance adjusters that decide how much to offer for your Miami Slip and Fall Accident claim take into account the difficulty that exists on your case to file a lawsuit in the Miami Dade County Circuit Court if they don’t offer you a fair settlement. They know it takes an experienced Miami slip and fall accident litigator to file a lawsuit and that the average person will not be able to do that with the complex procedural rules needed to handle a Miami slip and fall accident case in Miami Dade County Circuit Court which is where your Miami Car accident case needs to be filed. Even if your case seems like a sure win to you, they will know you cannot litigate it yourself. For that same reason, an out of state lawyer who is not licensed in Florida should not handle your accident case. The insurance adjuster will know the lawyer could have the incentive to settle for a lower amount of money because their firm will not be licensed to file suit on your case should it not settle. You should not take that risk.
Don’t believe that you will be giving away money that you would otherwise get yourself by hiring a lawyer. Experienced lawyers such as Jack Bernstein who oversee every case in his law firm add great value and cause your case to settle on average for a significantly larger amount of money. I personally am involved in negotiated settlements in my law office and go over the offers and demands personally with my staff of lawyers and handle many of the negotiations myself. I have worked on thousands of cases and know the values of slip and fall accident case injuries. Normally an experienced lawyer will get you a higher personal injury settlement which should easily cover the lawyer fees their office earns. It is important to understand that your slip and fall accident case is handled on a contingency basis. You will not have to pay any lawyer fees to Bernstein and Maryanoff unless you win your case through settlement out of court or through a lawsuit.
Hire a Competent Miami Slip & Fall Attorney
The most important reason to hire a Miami lawyer for a slip and fall accident that happened in Miami is that only a lawyer licensed in Florida is allowed to practice law in Florida as your lawyer and file a lawsuit if needed. You should not hire a lawyer from your state to work on your slip and fall case. (If you have already, you can terminate that lawyer from representing you and our office will send them a letter terminating them. You will never have to speak to them again and our office will tell them they are not allowed to get paid if they are not licensed to practice law in Florida) The insurance adjuster will be aware that your lawyer for your accident in Miami is not located there and is not a Miami lawyer. This can affect the outcome of your case. The insurance adjuster will be aware that your out of state lawyer cannot file a lawsuit in the Miami Circuit Court. The adjuster may offer less money knowing the out of state lawyer cannot file a lawsuit and cost the insurance company thousands and typically tens of thousands of dollars to defend your slip and fall accident case.