Catastrophic Injury Lawyer Hollywood, FL
Our Hollywood, FL catastrophic injury lawyer represents individuals and families confronting the most serious personal injury matters across Broward County. With more than 13 years of personal injury experience, our firm pursues full lifetime compensation for clients whose injuries will affect them permanently. We identify every available insurance source, retain the right specialists to quantify future costs, and prepare each case as though it will be tried. Loshak Law PLLC offers free, confidential consultations. Schedule yours today.
Why Choose Loshak Law PLLC for Catastrophic Injury Cases in Hollywood, FL?
Catastrophic injury cases are the most demanding category of personal injury work. Liability, causation, and damages all require a different level of preparation than an ordinary soft-tissue claim, and the client cannot afford for any part of that preparation to be shortchanged.
Resources Matched to the Stakes of Severe Injury Work
Brandon F. Loshak founded our firm and personally handles personal injury matters. He holds an AV® Preeminent™ rating from Martindale-Hubbell, the highest mark for legal ability and ethical standards. He is admitted to the bar in Florida and Texas, earned his J.D. from St. Thomas University School of Law, and holds a finance degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Aron Gibson, a South Florida native, has tried more than 60 jury trials. He was named to the National Trial Lawyers Top 40 Under 40, received the Broward County Bar Association Executive Director Award, and currently serves as President of the Broward County Trial Lawyers Association. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Miami. Trial readiness matters in catastrophic injury cases because defense carriers evaluate exposure based on whether a firm is prepared to try the case if negotiations break down.
Seven-Figure and Policy-Limits Recoveries
Our personal injury lawyers in Hollywood, FL have recovered millions of dollars for clients injured in South Florida, including a $2 million policy limits settlement following a catastrophic collision that required five surgeries and nearly six months of hospitalization, a $1.75 million auto accident result, a $1 million Uber auto accident recovery, a $1 million premises liability matter, and an $850,000 motorcycle accident settlement. Past outcomes do not guarantee future results, but the pattern reflects the resources our firm commits to serious cases and the scale at which we are prepared to work.
Contingency With Full Case Expense Advancement
Catastrophic injury cases are expense-intensive by nature. Accident reconstruction, biomechanical analysis, medical record review, life care planning, and vocational assessment all carry substantial cost. Our firm advances those costs entirely. We work on a pure contingency basis. No hourly fees, no retainer, no payment owed unless we recover compensation.
Access to a Deep Bench of Medical and Vocational Specialists
Our firm maintains offices in Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale. Over more than a decade of work in South Florida injury litigation, we have built working relationships with neurologists, neurosurgeons, orthopedists, physiatrists, burn specialists, life care planners, and vocational economists who handle these cases regularly. Both attorneys also hold active memberships with the Broward County Bar Association and regularly appear before local courts. Learn more about our firm and our approach.
“Loshak Law Firm Injury Lawyers are geeat! From start to finish, they were professional, compassionate, and incredibly knowledgeable. They kept me informed every step of the way, fought hard for my case, and truly cared about getting the best outcome possible. I felt supported and confident knowing I had such a dedicated team on my side. Highly recommend!”
Lauren Edlund ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
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Types of Catastrophic Injury Cases We Handle in Hollywood
Catastrophic injuries take many forms, and the case strategy shifts with the specific injury, the mechanism, and the medical trajectory. Our firm represents clients across the full range of catastrophic injury matters, including those arising from auto and motor vehicle incidents.
- Spinal cord injuries and paralysis. Complete and incomplete spinal cord injuries produce paraplegia, tetraplegia (quadriplegia), loss of sensation, bowel and bladder dysfunction, and chronic neuropathic pain. Lifetime costs frequently range into the millions, particularly for high cervical injuries requiring long-term ventilator support or attendant care.
- Brain injuries. Moderate to severe TBIs produce cognitive deficits, motor impairment, seizure disorders, behavioral and personality changes, and in the most serious cases, permanent vegetative or minimally conscious states. Life care planning is essential to capture the full long-term cost.
- Amputations and severe limb trauma. Traumatic amputations, surgical amputations following crush injury or vascular compromise, and cases involving the effective loss of use of a limb all fall within the catastrophic category. Prosthetics, revision surgeries, home modifications, and lifetime replacement and maintenance costs must be accounted for.
- Severe burns. Second and third-degree burns covering 25% or more of the body, or third-degree burns involving 5% or more of the face and hands, produce extraordinary medical complexity, including skin grafting, repeated reconstructive surgery, scar management, infection control, and psychological treatment for disfigurement. The American Burn Association reports approximately 450,000 people seek medical care for burn injuries in the United States each year.
- Blindness and vision loss. Complete and total loss of vision, and severe bilateral vision loss that functionally eliminates independent daily living, are recognized catastrophic injury categories under Florida law. Rehabilitation, assistive technology, home modifications, and vocational retraining all factor into the case value.
- Multi-organ and internal trauma. Blunt-force trauma from commercial truck collisions and other high-impact events can produce liver, spleen, kidney, and pulmonary injuries that require extended ICU care and long-term management even after initial stabilization.
- Fatal catastrophic injuries. When a catastrophic event produces fatal injuries, surviving family members may pursue a separate wrongful death claim for funeral expenses, loss of support and services, loss of companionship, and other statutorily defined losses.
Florida Legal Requirements for Catastrophic Injury Claims
Catastrophic injury cases in Florida run through ordinary negligence law, with several statutory frameworks that shape liability, proof, and the damages analysis.
Statutory definition of catastrophic injury. Florida Statute § 766.118 provides the most frequently cited statutory definition of “catastrophic injury” in Florida law. While that statute sits within the medical malpractice chapter and addresses noneconomic damages caps, the definition is regularly referenced in other contexts and includes spinal cord injury with severe paralysis, amputation involving effective loss of use, severe brain or closed-head injury, burns of 25% or more of the body or 5% of the face and hands, blindness, and loss of reproductive organs resulting in inability to procreate.
Florida’s motor vehicle tort threshold. When a catastrophic injury arises from a motor vehicle crash, Florida Statute § 627.737 sets the tort threshold that allows an injured party to step outside the no-fault framework. Catastrophic injuries almost always cross the statutory threshold of significant and permanent loss of an important bodily function, permanent injury, significant and permanent scarring or disfigurement, or death.
Two-year filing deadline for negligence. Under Florida Statute § 95.11, as amended by House Bill 837 in 2023, most negligence claims must be filed within two years of the injury. Medical negligence claims operate under a separate framework with different deadlines and presuit requirements. Wrongful death actions also follow a two-year statute under § 95.11(4)(e).
Modified comparative negligence. Under Florida Statute § 768.81, a plaintiff found more than 50% at fault recovers nothing. Defense firms routinely raise comparative fault in serious injury matters. Early documentation of the facts and careful handling of communications with insurers from the outset help defend against those arguments.
Insurance coverage stacking. Catastrophic injury claims frequently exhaust the at-fault party’s primary liability coverage and require identification of umbrella policies, commercial policies, employer coverage (for on-the-job injuries or vicarious liability), uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on the client’s own policy, MedPay, health insurance, and where applicable, the Florida Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Program under Florida Statute § 381.79.
What Damages Are Recoverable in Hollywood Catastrophic Injury Cases?
Catastrophic injury cases in Florida give rise to the same three categories of damages available in other personal injury matters, with the scale of each category running unusually large given the permanence of the underlying injuries.
Economic damages cover the verifiable financial losses. For a catastrophic injury, these include emergency and trauma care, ICU and inpatient hospitalization, surgery and revision surgery, rehabilitation and physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and cognitive therapy, durable medical equipment (wheelchairs, ventilators, prosthetics, assistive technology), home modifications (ramps, lifts, bathroom remodels, widened doorways), vehicle modifications, attendant and nursing care, future medical care across a projected life expectancy, and lost wages and diminished earning capacity. Our firm retains board-certified life care planners, vocational specialists, and economists to project costs across a client’s remaining life expectancy. According to the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, lifetime costs for a high tetraplegia spinal cord injury sustained at age 25 can approach $5 million in 2024 dollars, excluding lost earnings.
Non-economic damages compensate for physical pain, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, loss of consortium for spouses and family members, and the loss of the life the client had before the injury. These damages are highly individualized. In catastrophic cases, families frequently describe the experience of watching a loved one become a different person, or of providing round-the-clock care that fundamentally changes the household. Those losses are legally cognizable.
Punitive damages are reserved for cases involving egregious conduct. A catastrophic injury caused by an impaired driver, a manufacturer with knowledge of a safety defect, or an employer knowingly violating safety regulations can support a punitive claim. Florida law ordinarily applies statutory caps to punitive damages, though those caps do not apply to defendants who were intoxicated at the time of the underlying act.
According to the National Spinal Cord Injury Statistical Center, approximately 18,000 new spinal cord injury cases occur in the United States each year, and motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports tens of thousands of TBI-related deaths annually. Each of those numbers represents an individual and a family whose lives have changed permanently.
Contact Loshak Law PLLC
If you or someone you love has suffered a catastrophic injury, the early days and weeks after the event are critical. Medical documentation contemporaneous with the injury carries more weight than records generated later, witnesses disperse, and physical evidence can be lost within days.
When you reach out to Loshak Law PLLC, we will listen to what happened, review medical records and any incident reports, help coordinate with treating physicians and specialists, send preservation letters to all potentially responsible parties, identify every applicable insurance coverage, and walk through Florida’s two-year filing window.
Consultations with our Hollywood catastrophic injury lawyer are free, and our firm works on a contingency basis. No attorney fee is owed unless we recover compensation for you. Contact our office to schedule your free case review today.
