A Right To Damages Taken Away
The biggest change in Florida personal injury law is the change in the law of comparative negligence which now says that an injured party may not recover any damages if the injured party is more than 50 percent at fault.
This will affect every single case where both parties were partially at fault, and where the percentage of fault attributable to each is debatable, as is so often the case.
What if you were seriously injured in a collision at an intersection. In court, suppose the facts are contested, and a jury finds you to be 51% at fault in causing the collision, and the other driver to be 49% at fault.
You may have hospital bills, scars, permanent disabilities and lost earnings for which the other driver was 49% responsible. But rather than collect 49% of those damages from the other side, under the new law, you will get nothing. Nothing.
This means that a sizeable chunk of damages that were previously available under law no longer exists, and many injured persons will be denied recovery of a percentage of damages to which they were formerly entitled. A longstanding civil right to damages simply done away with by an act of the Legislature and the stroke of the Governor’s pen.
