Broward Injury Lawyer Blog

So many of the products we buy and use every day are manufactured outside the U.S. While these products must adhere to certain safety standards, sometimes they fall short, resulting in injury.

Pursuing litigation against foreign companies can pose challenges, as the recent case of Book v. Voma Tire Corp. et al. illustrated. The case, before the Iowa Supreme Court, almost did not make it to trial, at least where one foreign company was concerned, due to an alleged lack of jurisdiction.

Jurisdiction is the right of a court to oversee a lawsuit against an individual or business. A foreign company may have grounds to assert lack of jurisdiction in state court, although the precedent set in this case means they will be less likely to succeed, at least in Iowa.

Still, it’s important for injury attorneys to closely examine the facts of the case to determine the appropriate court in which to file suit.
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Florida is a welcome respite for visitors from around the world, and the widespread availability of watersports is a major draw. Unfortunately, those who offer excursions such as wakeboarding, parasailing or scuba diving sometimes put profits before people.

That is what was alleged in a horrific July 2013 parasailing accident in which two teen girls, both 17, were left in critical condition after their parasail snapped from the boat while they were in mid-air. The girls continued to soar through the air on 35-mile-an-hour winds that caused them to be thrown against the 13th floor of a condominium complex before they were sent crashing down into the parking lot below, slamming onto the top of a vehicle.

The friends were vacationing from Indiana at the time of the incident.
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Prior to 2010, the burden of proof for plaintiffs in slip-and-fall lawsuits in Florida was much lower. One needed to prove only the plaintiff encountered a slippery foreign substance on the ground, fell as a result and suffered injury.

However, the new statute placed a greater responsibility on the injured person to prove the business knew or should have known about the existence of the substance that proximately caused the fall, and also that the business failed to clean it up.

This has meant slip-and-fall accident claimants have a higher hurdle to overcome in proving their case. However, Florida’s First District Court of Appeal recently ruled in Glaze v. Chick-Fil-A et al. the new statute, F.S. 768.0755, can’t be applied retroactively. That means the old law, F.S. 768.0710, is the applicable law.
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The expectation consumers have when they purchase a product is it will work as stated when used as intended. In the legal world, this is called implied warranty of merchantability, and a breach resulting in injury can be grounds for a personal injury lawsuit.

However, plaintiffs in these product liability lawsuits must be able to prove causation.

In the recent case of Kallal v. CIBA Vision Corp., before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, causation was the primary issue that resulted in affirmation of summary judgment for the defense.
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Generally speaking, our laws don’t allow one party to be held liable for the wrongdoing of another. However, when it comes to premises liability – in particular, negligent security – there are numerous examples of property owners held liable for criminal acts committed on site.

In negligent security claims, the crux of the argument is the criminal attack/injury would not have occurred but for a property owner/manager’s failure to secure the site or provide protection for plaintiff, as they had a responsibility to do.

This was the allegation in Sanders v. Erp Operating Ltd. P’ship, considered recently on appeal by the Florida Supreme Court. Although a trial court ruled in favor of plaintiffs, the 4th DCA reversed. The Florida Supreme Court reversed again, finding plaintiffs’ proof of causation sufficient.
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The Florida Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of the decision by the 5th District Court of Appeals to uphold the validity of a release of liability waiver signed by a plaintiff who was later injured.

In so doing, the state high court cast aside the rulings of the four other appellate courts in the state, which had decided in other cases to make it tougher for defendants to use waivers as a defense.

This is not great news for injured plaintiffs. However, it does not mean liability waivers will now totally absolve individuals or companies from negligence or that these waivers should go unchallenged.

Still, it may be a tougher hurdle to overcome in the wake of the high court’s ruling in Sanislo v. Give Kids The World, Inc.
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