West Palm Beach Drunk Driving Injury Lawyers
Lesser, Landy, Smith & Siegel’s West Palm Beach drunk driving injury lawyers have recovered millions for clients hurt by impaired drivers, through insurance policies, punitive damages, and the drivers’ own assets. We know an injury is harder to accept when the driver chose to drink and then drive, and we build each case to hold that driver responsible for every loss the crash caused you.
Call our West Palm Beach office at (561) 655-2028 to set up a free, no obligation consultation with our lawyers.
Your Rights While the State Prosecutes the Drunk Driver
After police arrest a drunk driver in West Palm Beach, prosecutors at the State Attorney’s Office for the 15th Judicial Circuit can charge the driver under Florida law, which makes impaired driving that causes serious bodily injury a third-degree felony. Your injury case against the driver is a separate civil case, where you seek payment for your medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering.
The criminal judge can order the driver to pay you restitution, and the Florida Constitution gives crime victims the right to “full and timely restitution” in Article I, Section 16. A restitution order leaves your right to sue intact, and section 775.089(8) subtracts what the driver paid in restitution from your later civil recovery and bars a convicted driver from denying the facts that make up the impaired driving offense in your civil case.
The Florida Constitution also lets you take part in the criminal case through rights you can use on request, and you can ask to:
- Confer with the prosecutor about a plea deal and the sentence
- Speak at the plea and sentencing hearings
- Tell the officer preparing the presentence report how the crash affected you and your family
- Receive notice of the driver’s sentence and release date
Our West Palm Beach lawyers can work with the prosecutor so the restitution request accounts for your medical bills and lost income, and we can attend the plea and sentencing hearings with you.
Punitive Damages Without Florida's Usual Caps
Punitive damages punish a defendant for gross negligence or intentional misconduct, and in most Florida cases section 768.73 caps them at three times the compensatory damages or $500,000, whichever is greater. Section 768.736 removes the caps for a defendant who was under the influence of alcohol or drugs to the extent that normal faculties were impaired, or who had a blood or breath alcohol level of 0.08 or higher.
Section 768.72 lets your lawyer add a punitive damages request to a Florida lawsuit after making a reasonable showing through evidence in the record. The judge or jury then has to find the driver personally guilty of intentional misconduct or gross negligence, which the statute defines as conduct showing “a conscious disregard or indifference to the life, safety, or rights of persons.” In one of our cases, a jury awarded compensatory and punitive damages to a client who needed spinal surgery after a drunk driver hit her.
Insurance and Other Payment Sources After the Crash
Florida requires vehicle owners to carry $10,000 in personal injury protection (section 627.733) and $10,000 in property damage liability coverage (section 324.022) but sets no bodily injury liability minimum for most drivers, so the drunk driver who hit you may carry little or no coverage for your injuries. A driver with a prior conviction for impaired driving has to keep at least $100,000 per person and $300,000 per crash in bodily injury coverage for at least three years under section 324.023, which can mean higher limits when a repeat offender causes a crash.
Other money for your losses can come from:
- Your personal injury protection coverage, which pays 80 percent of reasonable medical expenses and 60 percent of lost income up to $10,000 when you get initial treatment within 14 days of the crash, with medical payments limited to $2,500 if a provider finds no emergency medical condition (section 627.736).
- Your uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, which can pay the difference when the drunk driver’s bodily injury limits are less than your total damages (section 627.727).
- The owner of the car the drunk driver was using, with limits on what an individual owner who lends a car to another driver has to pay (section 324.021(9)(b)3).
- The drunk driver’s personal assets, which a judgment against the driver can reach when insurance does not cover your full losses.
- Florida’s Crime Victim Compensation program, which the Attorney General’s office can pay as a last resort after insurance to eligible victims of impaired driving that caused physical injury or death (sections 960.03 and 13).
In a case where a drunk driver killed a client’s husband, Gary Lesser and Mickey Smith recovered the full uninsured motorist policy and a substantial payment from the driver’s own assets.
Dram Shop Laws: Bars and Restaurants That Served the Driver
Florida’s dram shop statute, section 768.125, protects a business that sells alcohol to a customer of lawful drinking age from liability for the customer’s intoxication. A bar or restaurant can be liable when its staff willfully and unlawfully served a customer under 21, or knowingly served a customer habitually addicted to alcohol.
Our lawyers pursue the bar along with the driver when a drunk driving injury case calls for it. After a bar over-served a known drunk who crashed and left our client with permanent brain damage, we brought a bad faith claim against the bar’s insurance company for refusing to pay its policy limits and recovered millions more than the policy limits.
Evidence for Your West Palm Beach Injury Case
The police agency that investigated the crash, your doctors, and any bar or restaurant that served the driver hold the evidence for your injury case. We gather the records from each source to prove the driver’s impairment, which can support a request for punitive damages, and the extent of your injuries, which affects the pain and suffering damages you can recover.
- The crash report, which Florida law keeps confidential for 60 days after the report is filed except from the people in the crash, their lawyers, and their insurance companies (section 316.066).
- The arrest report and breath or blood alcohol results, which officers and lab analysts produce for the prosecution and which our lawyers can request as the criminal case progresses.
- Records of the driver’s drinking before the crash, from receipts to witness accounts, which can point to a bar’s responsibility.
- Your medical records, where your doctors note your injuries and whether they are permanent, since Florida generally allows pain and suffering damages against a driver whose vehicle has the required PIP coverage only for a significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, a permanent injury, significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or death (section 627.737(2)).
Deadlines After a Drunk Driving Crash in Florida
Deadline
Time limit
Florida statute
Injury lawsuit against the drunk driver
2 years from the crash (4 years for crashes on or before March 24, 2023)
Crime Victim Compensation application
3 years for crimes on or after October 1, 2019, with extensions up to 5 years for good cause
The two-year lawsuit deadline counts from the crash date even while the drunk driver’s prosecution is still open, so our lawyers track your civil deadline separately from the criminal case calendar.
Choosing a Drunk Driving Injury Lawyer in West Palm Beach
Results in cases against impaired drivers show you how a lawyer has pursued cases like yours. When you review a lawyer’s verdicts and settlements, look for recoveries that went beyond the driver’s insurance policy through punitive damages, uninsured motorist coverage, a bar, or the driver’s own assets, and read client reviews to see how the lawyer treated clients during their cases.
Our case results page lists several of our verdicts and settlements in cases against drunk drivers and bars, and you can read what clients say about working with us in our Google reviews.
Questions About West Palm Beach Drunk Driving Injury Cases
What if the drunk driver was not convicted?
A drunk driving injury case can go forward when the criminal charge ends in an acquittal or a plea to a lesser charge, because your civil case asks whether the driver was negligent under the greater weight of the evidence, which is a lower standard than proof beyond a reasonable doubt in the criminal case.
Can my family bring a case if a drunk driver killed a loved one?
Florida’s Wrongful Death Act lets the personal representative of the estate bring a wrongful death case for the surviving family members and the estate (section 768.20), and the uncapped punitive damages rule for impaired drivers applies to a wrongful death lawsuit against a drunk driver.
Can I recover if I was a passenger in the drunk driver’s car?
You can bring an injury case against the drunk driver as a passenger, though the driver’s insurance company can argue that you share fault for riding with a driver you knew had been drinking. Florida’s comparative fault law reduces your recovery by any percentage of fault assigned to you and bars recovery if your share of fault is more than 50 percent (section 768.81).
Let Lesser, Landy, Smith & Siegel Pursue the Drunk Driver Who Hurt You
Lesser, Landy, Smith & Siegel opened in West Palm Beach in 1927, and our lawyers have spent a century holding negligent drivers responsible for the harm they cause in Palm Beach County. You pay no fee unless we recover money for you. Our West Palm Beach office is at 420 Columbia Drive, Suite 110. Call (561) 655-2028 or contact us to set up a consultation with our drunk driving injury lawyers.
