Practice Area
Larmoyeux & Bone has been successfully recovering compensation and protecting the financial future of spinal cord injury victims in West Palm Beach for decades.
Our trial lawyers have over 70 years of combined experience winning millions of dollars for victims of personal injury accidents, just like you.
We devote 100% of our practice to helping victims injured due to the negligent, reckless, and intentional actions of others. Here’s a sample of the most common types of personal injury accident claims that we routinely handle:
If you or a loved one has suffered a spinal cord injury due to the careless, reckless, or intentional actions of others, you need a knowledgeable and compassionate West Palm Beach board certified trial lawyer with experience handling spinal cord injury cases. Our firm has been helping victims like you for decades.
The team of spinal cord injury legal professionals at our West Palm Beach law firm understands what you’re going through.
You have questions about how much your claim is worth and how long it’ll take to get a fair settlement. Our experienced attorneys will give you straight, simple answers to all your questions.
Spinal cord injuries can be devastating. Victims often sustain agonizing, potentially life-threatening and life-altering physical and emotional injuries; face the prospect of financial ruin; and experience a catastrophic disruption to their entire way of life.
Although some people can recover from a spinal cord injury and resume normal lives, many others never regain normal functioning. They often require lifelong care and treatment as well as assistance with daily tasks.
When you call our accident investigators will help determine if you have a case.
We will begin the investigation, negotiation, mediation, or lawsuit.
Most cases are settled before going to trial. If yours isn’t, we will fight your case in court.
Not Sure If You Have A Claim? If In Doubt, Contact Us
Not Sure If You Have A Spinal Cord Injury Claim?
Accidents and injuries occur in the blink of an eye, and victims often aren’t even aware of the cause and that they are, in fact, victims with a viable spinal cord injury claim.
They may not know what caused the accident and their injuries, but they know that they need help getting medical treatment, dealing with insurance companies, and obtaining compensation for their injuries and medical bills.
If you have any doubt whether you are a victim with a viable spinal cord injury claim, don’t decide on your own or let insurance companies convince you that you don’t have a claim and thus don’t need a lawyer. Don’t accidentally forfeit compensation for your injuries to which you and your family are legally entitled and desperately need.
We’ll provide an objective knowledge-driven, experience-based professional assessment of the viability of your spinal cord injury claim at no cost to you.
Did you know that multiple parties may be
liable for your injuries and owe you compensation?
We know how to identify all the potential at-fault parties in your case against whom you may have a claim.
You and your loved ones have absolutely nothing to lose and potentially an awful lot to gain by calling us today.
While each personal injury case is unique, most cases typically involve the following basic steps.
Step 1: Determine if there’s a viable claim—after accepting the case, the personal injury lawyer will perform an initial investigation into the plaintiff’s injury to determine whether the facts and circumstances genuinely support a claim for damages.
Step 2: Demand letter—once a good-faith basis for a personal injury claim has been established, plaintiff’s lawyer sends a demand letter notifying the defendant’s insurance company of the claim, including a demand for a specified dollar amount to resolve the matter.
Step 3: Response and negotiation—upon receiving the demand letter, the insurance company will respond in one of three ways: (1) agree with the demand letter and promptly settle, (2) make a counteroffer and negotiate for an amount less than specified in the demand letter, or (3) deny the claim outright and refuse to pay any amount. Negotiating a settlement is the most common response, and most cases are resolved this way.
Step 4: Filing a lawsuit—if the parties can’t reach a settlement, the plaintiff’s lawyer files a lawsuit. During the pre-trial phase, the parties obtain evidence from each other, witnesses, and third parties in a process called “discovery.” The pre-trial phase can take several months or even years.
Step 5: Mediation—nearly all personal injury cases in Florida will be ordered to mediation by the court. Mediation is the process in which a neutral mediator facilitates discussion between the parties in an effort to resolve the case before going to trial. The parties can settle the case at any time, even after a lawsuit has been filed.
Step 6: Trial—if the parties can’t reach a settlement during mediation, the case goes to trial where a jury will generally determine liability and damage awards, if any.
Step 7: Appeal—a party who is unhappy with the final verdict can appeal, but there must be a legal basis for doing so, i.e., some material error that prevented a fair trial. Simply being unhappy with the outcome isn’t sufficient for an appeal.
The laws governing personal injury cases in Florida are extremely complex and highly specialized. To ensure that your legal rights to full and fair compensation are adequately protected, you must have the assistance of an experienced local personal injury lawyer, especially for cases involving particularly complex legal issues such as wrongful death, medical malpractice, and catastrophic injuries.
There are very strict and complicated filing deadlines that must be followed, or your case will not even be allowed to proceed, regardless of the actual merits of your case. Similarly, for many types of personal injury claims, there are numerous legal technicalities and complexities in place that make successfully prosecuting a personal injury claim virtually impossible for anyone other than a highly experienced and knowledgeable personal injury lawyer.
Various business and insurance interests have lobbied lawmakers aggressively over the years to get legislation enacted that often makes it difficult to hold the responsible parties and their insurance companies accountable for victims’ injuries and property damage they cause. This is especially true when victims attempt to take on the at-fault parties and their insurance companies by themselves.
Fortunately, our personal injury lawyers have the experience, knowledge, and resources to successfully navigate the complexities of Florida’s personal injury laws as well as the insurance claims process in order to obtain full and fair compensation for our clients.
We’ll provide an objective knowledge-driven, experience-based professional assessment of the viability of your personal injury claim at no cost to you. You have absolutely nothing to lose and potentially an awful lot to gain by calling us today.
We’ll give you straight, simple answers to all your questions, including medical payment coverage, personal injuries, property damage, and lost income, as well as assist you with completing necessary paperwork and guide you every step of the way through the legal and insurance claims processes.
And we do so with integrity, compassion, and understanding.
Florida Personal Injury Law Is Complex
The laws governing personal injury cases in Florida are extremely complex and highly specialized. To ensure that your legal rights to full and fair compensation are adequately protected, you must have the assistance of an experienced local personal injury lawyer, especially for cases involving particularly complex legal issues such as wrongful death, medical malpractice, and catastrophic injuries.
There are very strict and complicated filing deadlines that must be followed, or your case will not even be allowed to proceed, regardless of the actual merits of your case. Similarly, for many types of personal injury claims, there are numerous legal technicalities and complexities in place that make successfully prosecuting a personal injury claim virtually impossible for anyone other than a highly experienced and knowledgeable personal injury lawyer.
Various business and insurance interests have lobbied lawmakers aggressively over the years to get legislation enacted that often makes it difficult to hold the responsible parties and their insurance companies accountable for victims’ injuries and property damage they cause. This is especially true when victims attempt to take on the at-fault parties and their insurance companies by themselves.
Fortunately, our personal injury lawyers have the experience, knowledge, and resources to successfully navigate the complexities of Florida’s personal injury laws as well as the insurance claims process in order to obtain full and fair compensation for our clients.
Contact us today for a no-cost initial consultation and preliminary case review. Remember, time is not on your side. Each day you delay in seeking legal help is one day closer to you being time barred from ever bringing a case for your injuries.
Chris Larmoyeux and Bill Bone have devoted their over 70 years of combined legal experience to helping personal injury accident victims like you.
They are among the 1% of all lawyers who are Board Certified in Civil Trial Law by The Florida Bar, have been awarded the highest possible rating for Legal Ability and General Ethical Standards by Martindale-Hubbell—the preeminent independent lawyer rating service, and consistently earn annual inclusion in the entirely peer-review lawyer rating service Best Lawyers. And, yes, they’ve won numerous $1 million+ recoveries for victims and their families.
Chris Larmoyeux and Bill Bone are trial lawyers.
Not all personal injury lawyers are trial lawyers. Many personal injury lawyers have never taken a case to trial. There’s an extremely important distinction between lawyers who are ready, willing, and able to go to trial and those who won’t and settle 100% of their cases.
The ability and willingness to take on insurance companies at trial is a critical consideration when choosing a top personal injury lawyer, especially when very serious or catastrophic injuries are involved. When facing a lawyer who will actually litigate the case in court if necessary, insurance companies know that if their pretrial settlement offer is unreasonably low they risk having a jury award a much higher amount at trial. This helps keep settlement offers, for the most part, fair and reasonable.
In contrast, insurance companies are more willing to extend lowball settlement offers to those lawyers who will never go to trial (and there are many of them), and insurance companies know exactly who they are. Trials are expensive, time-consuming, and require high-caliber litigation skills for victory. Many lawyers lack the financial resources, patience, and/or legal ability to take insurance companies to court and win, so they make a career out of settling every single one of their cases.
But is this the type of personal injury lawyer you want and need representing you? Think about it—even if the final settlement offer is objectively and insultingly low, what’s the lawyer going to do? He or she may negotiate a slight increase but still way below full and fair value. Without the legitimate threat of going to trial, the insurance company knows that eventually the offer will be accepted.
This makes the insurance company happy because it saves money, and it makes the lawyer happy because he or she gets a portion of the settlement. It’ll likely even make the injured client happy because a settlement amount is received, but unbeknownst to the client, it’s likely a lot less than if he or she had a personal injury lawyer ready, willing, and able to go to trial.
Chris Larmoyeux and Bill Bone are trial lawyers. They are both experienced litigators who are ready, willing, and able to go to trial to fight for full and fair compensation for their clients.
Don’t Take On Insurance Companies By Yourself
To receive full and fair compensation for your injuries and property damage, you need an experienced personal injury lawyer on your side.
The truth is the likelihood of you receiving full and fair compensation is relatively low if you decide to take on the insurance companies by yourself. There is a maze of incredibly complex legal rules and insurance claims procedures in place that make it very difficult for you to obtain everything to which you are entitled under the law on your own.
Insurance companies are in the business of making as much profit as they can. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but they do this by paying out as little as possible to accident victims and their families. That’s why they sometimes aggressively fight even obviously legitimate and deserving claims. This is true for both victims’ own insurance company as well as those of the at-fault party or parties involved in the accident.
Victims who don’t have an experienced personal injury lawyer representing them are at a tremendous disadvantage. They generally don’t know how to realistically value their claim, how to maximize the amount of any settlement offer, and how best to prove their case. Insurance companies and their lawyers take advantage of this inexperience and lack of knowledge to deny victims’ claim outright or pay a mere fraction of what they would have paid if an experienced personal injury lawyer were representing the victims.
Unfortunately, some insurance companies are notorious for establishing claims procedures and institutional mechanisms that make it as difficult as possible for victims to obtain fair compensation. They have been known to deliberately make the claims process as complex and frustrating as they can in the hopes that victims will feel overwhelmed, give up, and accept lowball settlement offers. This strategy is highly effective with respect to victims who don’t have an experienced personal injury lawyer on their side.
To make the situation even worse, victims are faced with this seemingly impossible task at a time when they are likely at their most vulnerable and desperate point in their life. Even under the best of circumstances, it is virtually impossible for the average person alone to successfully battle insurance companies and their army of lawyers and paid expert witnesses. No matter how obviously deserving of compensation a victim may be, no insurance company is going to simply provide a fair and reasonable settlement offer to the victim merely because he or she deserves it.
Don’t let the insurance companies decide what your claim is worth. And don’t let them bully you into giving up valuable rights or accepting less than what you are entitled to under the law.
Contact us today for a free initial consultation and case evaluation. We have the experience, knowledge, and resources to successfully take on the insurance companies for you.
Yes! We’re here for you 24/7.
Our lawyers personally handle every case they agree to take and treat every client with compassion and understanding. We don’t hand victims off to junior associates or recent law school grads once victims have entrusted their claim and hopes for the future to them.
We understand the enormous trust clients place in them and would never do anything to violate the sanctity of that trust.
We know that the aftermath of a personal injury accident is an incredibly traumatic and stressful time for you. You may be suffering from agonizing, potentially life-threatening and life-altering physical, mental, and emotional injuries; facing the prospect of financial ruin; and experiencing a catastrophic disruption to your way of life.
Your focus should be on your physical, mental, and emotional recovery, not dealing with medical bills and trying to navigate the complex maze of the insurance claims process and fighting for compensation from the at-fault party.
Thankfully, you don’t have to. You focus on healing. We’ll do all the work. We handle the coordination of your medical bills, navigate the insurance claims process, and fight for the compensation you deserve. We keep you updated and informed through the entire process, ensure you have all the information you need to make the necessary decisions, and advise you of any changes or new developments in your case.
We firmly believe that consistent and timely communication with you is an essential part of our representation and critical for your peace of mind.
If You Don’t Need a Lawyer, We’ll Tell You. if We Can Help, We’ll Get Started on Your Claim Immediately.
There are so many West Palm Beach spinal cord injury lawyers that it’s nearly impossible for the average person to identify and choose one truly among the area’s top practitioners. It’s true in fact, there are far too many … but it’s equally valid that there aren’t enough really good ones. So how do you identify and choose one of the really good ones?
Personal injury accidents generally occur because one or more parties involved were negligent. Florida law imposes a duty of care on people engaged in certain activities that require them to exercise due caution and ordinary and reasonable care to ensure the safety of others.
For example, Florida law imposes a duty of care on all drivers of motor vehicles that require them to exercise due caution and ordinary and reasonable care to ensure the safety of others sharing the roads. A driver is negligent when they fail to act with proper respect, breaching the duty of care and causing injury to others.
Therefore, if you’ve been seriously injured in an accident due to someone else’s reckless actions, you need an experienced personal injury lawyer on your side to get the compensation you deserve.
The spinal cord is a bundle of nerves that runs down the middle of the back. The spinal cord carries signals back and forth between the body and brain. A spinal cord injury disrupts those signals. Such injuries usually begin with an impact that fractures (breaks) or dislocates the vertebrae (the bone disks that make up the spine), ligaments, or disks of the spinal column or the spinal cord itself.
Most spinal cord injuries don’t cut through the spinal cord. Rather, they cause damage when pieces of vertebrae tear into cord tissue or press down on the nerves that carry signals. The ability to control one’s limbs following a spinal cord injury depends on (1) the location of the injury along the spinal cord and (2) the severity of injury to the spinal cord. Depending on which segment of the spinal cord is injured, and how badly, a person may lose some or all of their motor and sensory functions beneath the injury.
Complete And Incomplete Injuries
Spinal cord injuries are classified as complete or incomplete, depending on the severity of the injury. In the case of a complete injury, the cord can’t send signals below the location of the injury, which results in paralysis below the injury. With an incomplete injury, there is some movement and sensation below the injury. There are varying degrees of incomplete injury.
Medical Emergency
A spinal cord injury is a medical emergency that requires immediate treatment. Treatments may include medications, braces or traction to stabilize the spine, and surgery. Subsequent treatment typically includes medications and rehabilitation therapy. Mobility aids and assistive devices may be required for daily tasks.
Spinal cord injuries of any type may result in one or more of the following symptoms:
Emergency Signs And Symptoms
Whenever you experience significant trauma to your head or neck, you need immediate medical evaluation for the possibility of a spinal injury. After suffering trauma to your head or neck, you should assume you have a spinal injury until proven otherwise because:
Common Causes Of Spinal Cord Injuries
Estimated Lifetime Costs To Live With A Permanent Spinal Cord Injury
Importance Of Knowing Settlement Values Before Accepting A Settlement Offer
After you’ve suffered a spinal cord injury, the insurance company of the at-fault party may contact you with a settlement offer. However, that offer may be much less than you actually deserve and are entitled to in light of the nature and severity of your injuries and the circumstances surrounding the accident. But you have no way of knowing whether it’s a fair offer.
Why? Because in order to make that determination, you need to know past settlement amounts and jury verdicts in cases involving victims of a spinal cord injury similar to yours. Insurance companies use this information in their settlement negotiations. As a result, without having this information yourself, you simply don’t know whether you’re receiving a fair offer.
Fortunately, you don’t have to blindly accept the insurance company’s settlement offer.
We monitor spinal cord injury settlements and jury verdicts, so we know approximately how much your claim is likely worth based on comparable cases and whether any settlement offers from the insurance company are fair and reasonable.
Call us today before you accept a settlement offer. Once you’ve accepted, it’s too late because you can’t sue for a higher amount later even if you discover the settlement amount is much less than your claim is actually worth.
Yes! Florida is a pure comparative negligence state. This means that even if you are partially at-fault for your spinal cord injury, you may still be entitled to compensation. In fact, under pure comparative negligence, you may still be eligible for compensation even if you are deemed to have been at greater fault for the accident than the other at-fault party or parties involved.
After a spinal cord injury accident, fault is determined and apportioned among the parties involved, and how much compensation injured parties can recover is limited by each party’s relative share of fault for causing the accident. As a result, an injured party’s recovery is limited by his or her assigned percentage of fault for causing the accident.
For example, in a motor vehicle accident where the injured motorist is deemed to have been 30% negligent in contributing to the crash, his or her total damage award will be decreased by 30%. So the maximum amount the motorist can receive is 70% of the total monetary recovery. Thus, if the total monetary recovery is $100,000, the motorist is entitled to only 70% of that amount or $70,000.
Comparative negligence helps explain why insurance companies work so hard to shift as much blame for an accident as possible to victims. That’s also why a spinal cord injury accident victim must be extremely careful if he or she decides to talk with insurance companies. Statements made to them can be used to help establish the victim’s share of fault for the accident. No matter how friendly and sympathetic their representatives may seem, they are not looking out for the victim’s best interests.
It’s important for spinal cord injury accident victims to consult with a knowledgeable board certified trial lawyer with experience handling spinal injury cases before talking with anyone from an insurance company. A board certified trial lawyer has the knowledge and experience to protect victims’ rights when dealing with the insurance companies. In addition, an experienced attorney knows how best to use the available evidence and which experts are needed, if any, to accurately establish the parties’ relative fault for an accident.
Higher Damage Awards And Settlement Amounts For Certain Types Of Cases
Damage awards in cases involving reckless behavior resulting in property damage and personal injury can be substantially greater than cases involving ordinary negligence. They are generally described as “enhanced value” cases. These types of spinal cord injury cases implicate a legal concept commonly referred to as “aggravated negligence,” which frequently leads to much higher damage awards and settlement amounts for victims than crashes involving ordinary negligence.
Virtually all traffic accidents are the result of negligence by at least one of the parties involved. For example, when a driver rear-ends the vehicle in front because the driver was following too closely, his or her negligence was the cause of the accident. But the driver’s behavior wasn’t an egregious and wanton disregard for the safety and welfare of others. It was an instance of ordinary negligence, a momentary lapse in concentration or judgment.
In contrast, for example, in a situation where a driver is traveling 20+ mph over the speed limit, weaving in and out of traffic and cutting off other drivers in the process, passing other vehicles on the shoulder of the road, and eventually causes a serious crash, the driver’s behavior will likely be characterized as reckless. As such, the degree of negligence involved will also likely be classified as “aggravated,” meaning the damage award or settlement amount for the victims will likely be much higher than if the driver had been guilty of ordinary negligence.
Simply put, cases involving aggravated negligence will generally result in a sizable damage award or settlement amount. Our back injury lawyers have been successfully handling aggravated negligence cases on behalf of clients for decades. We have the experience and expertise to help you with your aggravated negligence claim.
Damage Awards And Settlement Amounts Depend On The Facts Of The Case
Naturally, the specific types of damages and amounts that may be awarded depend upon the facts and circumstances of each individual case. There are literally dozens of factors that contribute to the settlement value or jury award amount of an injury claim. As such, what someone you know received or the amount an injured victim claims to have obtained in a law firm’s advertisement will have virtually no bearing on the actual value of your claim. That is why it is so important to consult with an experienced and knowledgeable spinal injury lawyer in order to protect your rights and provide a fact-based, experience-driven assessment of the potential value of your injury or damage claim.
Otherwise, without an objective and reasonable valuation of your case based on an experienced back injury attorney’s expert opinion, you could unwittingly accept a settlement offer that is dramatically lower or holdout in vain for an offer that is unrealistically higher than the generally accepted valuation range of your case based on all the facts and circumstances involved. In either scenario, the very real possibility exists that you will not be fairly and fully compensated, if at all, for your injuries, personal property, out-of-pocket expenses, and lost income.
What Types Of Damages Are Available In Spinal Cord Injury Cases?
Below is a list of the most common types of compensatory damages awarded in spinal cord injury cases. As the name implies, compensatory damages are intended to compensate the injured party and help him or her return to the physical, emotional, and financial state he or she was in prior to the injury. They are generally classified as either Noneconomic Damages or Economic Damages.
Noneconomic Damages
Economic Damages
Time is NOT on your side!
Each day you delay in seeking legal help is one day closer to you
being time barred from ever bringing a spinal cord injury claim.
We’ll give you straight, simple answers to all your questions as well as assist you with completing necessary paperwork and guide you every step of the way through the legal and insurance processes. And we do so with integrity, compassion, and understanding.
We know that this is an incredibly traumatic and stressful time for you. Your focus should be on your physical, mental, and emotional recovery, not fighting for compensation and holding the wrongdoers accountable.
Thankfully, you don’t have to. You focus on healing. We’ll do all the work.
We keep you updated and informed through the entire process, ensure you have all the information you need to make the necessary decisions, and advise you of any changes or new developments in your case. We firmly believe that consistent and timely communication with you and your family is an essential part of our representation and critical for your peace of mind.
If you don’t need a lawyer, we’ll tell you. If we can help, we’ll get started on your claim immediately with no upfront costs and no lawyer fees unless we recover compensation for you.
We’re here for you 24/7. Call us now at (561) 623-3597.
Larmoyeux & Bone provides legal services in Palm Beach County Florida including the towns and cities of Boca Raton, Belle Glade, Boynton Beach, Delray Beach, Greenacres, Hypoluxo, Juno Beach, Jupiter, Lantana, Lake Park, Lake Worth, Loxahatchee, Palm Beach Gardens, Riviera Beach, Royal Palm Beach, Tequesta, West Palm Beach, and Wellington.
