Can You Sue An Uninsured Driver In Florida After A Car Accident?

Transcript

Hi, I’m Mike Hancock and today I want to answer the question that we frequently get and that is: “Can I sue an uninsured driver in Florida?” So, the quick answer is yes you can; whether a person has insurance or not does not affect your ability to sue that person for their negligence that causes injuries from a car accident. So then we look at the practical aspects of suing an uninsured driver. Some of the things we look at are whether they have any other assets that would justify suing them, pursuing the case all the way through trial, getting a judgement against them and then trying to collect on that judgement. That’s what it really boils down to as far as whether an attorney is going to make that decision as to- whether to actually bring a lawsuit and file a lawsuit against an uninsured driver, because we would have to take it all the way through trial, get a verdict, render that verdict down into a judgement, and then go and try to collect on that judgement. As I tell my clients all the time, if this person who does not have any car insurance, that’s the first red flag right there. Most people who do have assets have insurance, but if someone does not have car insurance, that’s the first red flag. We also check if the person doesn’t have a job, is a five time felon, has no assets, has no insurance, is driving a twenty year old vehicle, that all gives us an idea right there that they don’t have sufficient assets to justify filing a lawsuit, going to trial, getting a verdict, and rendering that verdict into a judgement. Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t file a small courts case yourself. They make it- the court’s system in Florida makes that extremely easy and user-friendly and it’s meant to be done without an attorney involved. But the one thing that we want to do for our clients before making that decision- that there aren’t any assets to justify filing a suit- is really doing research to find out if this person didn’t have insurance, maybe someone else did that covers the automobile that they were driving. So we exhaust all the possibilities of trying to find out whether or not there is any possible insurance coverage to provide benefits to pay for your injuries. Second thing we do is to make sure that they were not in the course and scope of employment with somebody, so even though they make have been driving their own vehicle and they did not have any insurance on that vehicle they might have been on the job for a company at the time, and the company would be responsible for their negligence. So, I hope that provides some quick answers for you in answering the question: “Can I sue an uninsured driver in Florida?” If you have any other questions regarding your injury case or anything else, please give me a call or go to my website hancockinjuryattorneys.com for more answers to similar questions.