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With every personal injury case in Boca Raton, such as a car accident, there is a defined statute of limitations set for them to make a claim that is calculated from the date of the accident. Once a statute of limitation has expired, a person’s claim is forever barred, meaning there is a date set by statute that on a certain date in the future, their ability to file a lawsuit against those people responsible or their own insurance company ends.
There are various statutes of limitations pertaining to car accidents, there is no one answer. To best determine what your particular statute of limitations is after your accident, you should retain the help of an experienced car accident attorney. An attorney can help you to deal with your case within the appropriate statute.
After recent changes in Florida law, as of 2023 an individual has two years from the date of the accident to sue that individual or company, whoever might be the driver and the owner of the vehicle. This could be under the circumstances that they struck a person in the back of their car, they ran a red light and broadsided them, or they did a U-turn in front of the person, or came over into their lane. If they are making an uninsured or underinsured motorist claim, which is a lawsuit against their own insurance company, then technically it is based on contract, which is a five-year statute of limitations.
However, some policies of insurance require that a person sue the defendant driver as well, which means that although they can sue their insurance company for up to five years, they can only sue the at-fault driver after two years and so they better look at their policy and know whether the person has to bring them in or not. If they wait five years or four and a half years to see, their insurance company may require that they sue the other driver, and they do not have the ability to do that anymore, so the person has blown a material portion of their policy and then may negate coverage. There are traps for the unknowing and uneducated as it pertains to insurance policies. But, a person can throw all of those out if an insurance company becomes insolvent.
If an insurance company becomes insolvent, the person has one year from the day of the insolvency to file a lawsuit. It does not extend the statute of limitations, but it limits it in other words. If they are involved in an accident today then tomorrow the at-fault driver’s insurance company is to pay an insolvent and taken over by the state of Florida. They do not have two years to file a suit against that driver, they now have one year.
If an individual’s insurance company goes insolvent and is taken over by the state of Florida, they no longer have five years, they have one year from the date of insolvency, one year from the date that the insurance company is taken over.
If a person is involved in an accident and the at-fault driver’s insurance company goes insolvent next week, normally a person would have two years from the day to file a suit but instead, they have one year from the date of insolvency next week to file a suit. If the insurance company becomes insolvent two days before the statute of limitations run, the statute of limitations is still two days away, and it does not extend it for next three years. That is called the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association.
They are the watchdog agency – they are the arm of the insurance that takes over insurance companies when a person’s balance sheets are not proper and they administer the claims of the insurance company but by statute it is one year from the date of the insolvency. So if a lawyer ever says to someone that their statute of limitations for their car accident in Boca Raton is strictly four years or five years, they are not being thorough, because there are other factors such as insolvency. The death of the other driver can pose a problem, and other issues that come up. So there are basic hard and fast rules subject to a litany of modifiers when dealing with the statute of limitations following a Boca Raton car accident.
Depending on the case, a minor may have the ability to bring the case later on for a certain period of time after they achieve majority, meaning that the statute of limitations is temporarily on hold until they are an adult but that is subject to many conditions and a lawyer should be consulted. As to a person with disabilities, there is no modifier, there is no change to the statute of limitations. The only exception to that is a minor.
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