Earlier this month, a state appellate court issued a written opinion in a Florida car accident case requiring the court to determine whether a residential community could be held liable for an accident victim’s injuries. The court’s opinion largely focused on the question of whether the defendant’s negligence was the proximate cause of the plaintiffs’ injuries. However, the case also serves as a valuable lesson for Florida injury victims.
Proximate Cause in Florida Injury Cases
To establish a claim of liability against a defendant, a plaintiff must be able to show that the defendant’s actions were the proximate cause of their injury. To be sure, proximate cause is a complex legal concept, but boiled down to its essence proximate cause is a question of whether the plaintiff’s injuries were a natural and foreseeable result of the defendant’s actions. In many Florida car accident cases, proximate cause is not contested because the plaintiff’s injuries are the clear result of the defendant’s conduct. However, the case mentioned above presented a unique situation.
The Facts of the Case
According to the court’s recitation of the facts, the plaintiffs were driving through a residential community when they came across a portion of the road where cars were parked on either side of the street. As the plaintiffs approached the bottleneck, they stopped in the middle of the road to allow an oncoming car to pass through the parked cars. However, as the plaintiffs were stopped, another car rear-ended their vehicle.