What If A Tourist Has An Accident With An Uninsured Motorist?

You are looking at a bad situation, honestly. If the other driver is completely at fault and he has no bodily injury liability coverage and he has no assets. If he has nothing, he lives in an apartment and does not own anything, and then you are stuck. Hopefully you will not be, but you could end up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical expenses here in Florida and that you have no ability to recoup from anyone else. That is why we urge people to have uninsured motorist if they are going to be renting a car here.

Also, a lot of European travelers seem to do this already, but also there is travel insurance that has injury riders that you can buy that will cover medical expenses if you incur them in a foreign country. Florida’s uninsured motorist coverage is particularly liberal. It will cover you in situations you would never even dream of. But yes, definitely. As long as you are in the United States, and you are Floridian and you have UM, as long as you get in an accident in a U.S., it will pay you the same way it would as if you are in the state of Florida.

How Can A Tourist’s Own Insurance Policy Impact Recovery In A Personal Injury Claim?

Yes, that is going to depend on where they are from and what the policy says. A lot of people from other countries have their medical expenses paid by their country, by their national health system, so that is not an aspect of damages that we can recover for somebody, but we can still get pain and suffering and those kinds of things or wage loss if we can prove wage loss. It really depends on the type of insurance that they have. There is a whole separate area of the law called Choice of Law that often comes into play when people have insurance from other states.

They are here and they want to make claims against their own insurance company’s benefits. That aspect of the claim might be governed by the laws in the state that they are coming from, or the country that they are coming from. So these foreign, or out of state type of accidents can sometimes be really complex and confusing. Sometimes it will require lawyers in both places to be involved, and that is why we are here to answer questions and to be available to people that need help.

What Type Of A Claim Can Result If A Tourist Is Injured In A Hotel?

In hotel type cases, they are typically like a trip and fall or slip and fall situation in a restaurant or perhaps there is a pothole or something on the premises of the hotel that causes someone to fall, I have just resolved one of those where I had a little girl from England who was hurt here in Florida. Sometimes we run into people who eat bad food or they find glass in their food or something like that. We tried cases where kids have had their fingers amputated on sharp surfaces at resorts or when doors have closed unexpectedly on them and things like that. So, it runs the gamut. Probably it would be similar to almost any type of injury you might find at any sort of business or a hotel or place like that, it is not really anything unparticular to Florida, but it really runs the gamut.

What Are The Laws In Regards To Beaches In Florida?

The beach law is kind of interesting, because we still have a few beaches close to Central Florida where anyone is allowed to drive on the beach; they actually drive their car on the beach. So usually during the big holiday weekends, during the year, you will hear stories of people being accidentally run over while they are sitting in their chaise lounge, they accidentally get run over by drivers on the beach or people will get hit by people driving on the beach . Probably not surprisingly, there are quite a few drunk people who are drinking and driving on the big holiday weekends, so we often run into situations like that.

Those cases are basically handled just like any other car accident or automobile versus pedestrian accident case. So, with the beach there have been some claims. I do not know how successful they have been against lifeguard agencies where people have drowned at the beach, but usually that is during a riptide situation where people are not supposed to be in the water anyway. They are not that frequent thankfully, but they do happen.

For more information on Tourists & Uninsured Motorists, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling 407-565-7386 today.