Practice Area
For decades, Larmoyeux & Bone has successfully recovered compensation and protected the financial future of families of wrongful death victims in West Palm Beach.
Our trial lawyers have over 70 years of combined experience winning millions of dollars for families of victims of wrongful death accidents. We can help you too.
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 wrongful death cases that we routinely handle:
When a loved one has been taken away suddenly by the actions of another, you need a board-certified trial lawyer who handles wrongful death cases—our firm has been helping victims like you for over 30 years.
The team of wrongful death professionals at Larmoyeux & Bone understands what you and your family are going through. You have questions about whether you have a claim, how much it’s worth, and how long it’ll take to get compensation and hold the wrongdoer accountable.
Our experienced board-certified trial lawyers will give you straight, simple answers to all your questions.
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
Under the Wrongful Death Act, the decedent’s representative is authorized to file a lawsuit “for the benefit of the decedent’s survivors and estate all damages, as specified in this act, caused by the injury resulting in death.” F.S. § 768.20.
The personal representative may be an individual named in the decedent’s will or estate plan; however, in the absence of a will or estate plan, the court will appoint the personal representative.
The statute defines survivors as “the decedent’s spouse, children, parents, and, when partly or wholly dependent on the decedent for support of services, any blood relatives and adoptive brothers and sisters. It includes the child born out of wedlock of a mother, but not the child born out of wedlock of the father unless the father has recognized a responsibility for the child’s support.” F.S. § 768.18(1).
A wrongful death lawsuit may be filed on behalf of the following list of survivors:
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.
Florida Statutes § 768.21 sets forth the damages that may be awarded for wrongful death. In general, the following categories of damages may be recovered in a wrongful death lawsuit:
Not all survivors are eligible to recover all of the types of damages generally available under the Wrongful Death Act. There are detailed rules on which types of damages each survivor is entitled to recover.
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 wrongful death 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?
Standard Rule
Generally, a wrongful death lawsuit must be filed within two years of the date of death. F.S. § 95.11(4)(d). This is referred to as the statute of limitations. The general two-year filing deadline can be tolled (pausing or delaying the running of the filing period) in certain very limited circumstances. Determining the exact date on which you are time-barred from ever filing a wrongful death lawsuit is often complicated, so you should contact an experienced wrongful death lawyer immediately to discuss your situation or inadvertently be prevented from filing a wrongful death claim forever.
Medical Malpractice
Standard Rule
It’s important to note that in cases where medical malpractice results in death, the statute of limitations governing medical malpractice claims applies, not the statute of limitations for wrongful death actions. F.S. § 95.11(4)(b).
Although both statutes of limitations run for a two-year period, the critical difference between the application of the two statutes is when each statute begins to run. The statute for medical malpractice claims begins to run when the medical malpractice occurred or when it is discovered or should have been discovered with the exercise of due diligence, not upon death. This is a critical difference between the two statutes.
Discovery Rule
On its face, Florida’s statute of limitations for medical malpractice claims appears deceptively simple and straightforward. Injured parties have two years to commence an action from the date of the occurrence of the alleged medical malpractice or the date when it was discovered or should have been discovered.
This aspect of the statute of limitations is often referred to as the Discovery Rule, which operates to toll the starting of the statute of limitations until the discovery of the alleged medical malpractice. But what does “discovered” actually mean?
According to the Florida Supreme Court, discovered means both knowledge of the injury and “also knowledge that there is a reasonable possibility that the injury was caused by medical negligence.” Tanner v. Hartog, 618 So.2d 177, 181 (Fla. 1993). That is, discovery of an injury alone is not sufficient to trigger the running of the statute of limitations under the Discovery Rule. There must also be an awareness that the injury may be the result of medical malpractice.
Thus, the statute of limitations under the Discovery Rule is triggered upon discovery of the injury itself for those injuries that are patently likely the result of medical malpractice. On the other hand, with respect to injuries that can reasonably be attributed to natural causes, the statute of limitations is triggered only upon the discovery that there is reason to believe that medical malpractice may have occurred.
Statute Of Repose
In addition to the separate statute of limitations, medical malpractice claims are subject to what’s referred to as a statute of repose. A statute of repose serves as an absolute bar to recovery. Once it runs, it extinguishes the claim entirely even if the claim is not yet time-barred by the applicable statute of limitations. The statute of repose controls in that scenario. Kush v. Lloyd, 616 So.2d 415 (Fla. 1992).
Florida medical malpractice claims are subject to a four-year statute of repose. F.S. § 95.11(4)(b). The statute states that “in no event shall the action be commenced later than 4 years from the date of the incident or occurrence out of which the cause of action accrued….” That is, such claims must be brought within four years of the date of the alleged medical malpractice.
But even under the statute of repose, Florida law provides for two narrow exceptions for children eight years of age or younger and fraudulent concealment. F.S. § 95.11(4)(b).
The statute of repose is extremely complex and technical. While statutes of limitations are widely known and even understood by much of the general public, the same does not hold true with respect to statutes of repose. In fact, even many lawyers do not fully appreciate the critical differences between the two. The Florida Supreme Court made note of this fact, observing that even among practicing lawyers there “is considerable misunderstanding of the relationship between statutes of limitations and statutes of repose.” Kush, 616 So.2d at 418. This is likely due to the fact that statutes of repose are relatively rare. Every cause of action in every state is governed by an applicable statute of limitations, but relatively few causes of action are also covered by a statute of repose.
Complexity Of Filing Deadlines
Filing deadlines are among the most important yet complex issues regarding a wrongful death claim. It must be initiated by a specific deadline, or you may be completely barred from proceeding with your lawsuit, even if you have a valid claim that would otherwise entitle you to recover for your loved one’s wrongful death.
This complexity makes successfully filing and winning a wrongful death claim in Florida exceptionally difficult for anyone other than a very knowledgeable lawyer ideally with years of experience handling both wrongful death and medical malpractice cases.
We have been successfully recovering compensation and protecting the financial future of wrongful death and medical malpractice victims like you for decades. Call us today before it’s too late.
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.
