If someone’s negligence caused your eye injury, you may have a case.
There are many typical eye injuries. They include deep puncture wounds from accidents.
Tip: If you have a deep puncture wound to your eye from an accident, take photos and video immediately. Photos and video can have a big effect when making a settlement demand to the responsible party’s insurance company.
Some of these eye injuries may need emergency surgery or medical care to stop permanent eye damage that leads to loss of vision.
If you have surgery to your eye, this increases the full value of the case. If you have permanent damage to your eye, this increases the full value of your case.
Does Eye Surgery Qualify as a Permanent Injury Under Florida Auto Law?
In most Florida car accident cases, you need a permanent injury in order to be entitled to get money for pain and suffering. Insurance companies for the responsible party will often consider an eye surgery to be a permanent injury.
Minor Surface Scratches
Minor eye surface scratches may just need to be looked after the first visit to an eye doctor. This is to make sure that complications like eye infections don’t happen.
Minor eye surface scratches are generally not worth a lot of money if you don’t have complications like an eye infection.
Eye Swelling
Eye puffiness and swelling, or swollen eyelids can be caused from a car accident or slip and fall. Take photos of you using an ice pack for this injury.
Take photos of any bruising that you have. You could just have a basic black eye (which is bruising around the eye).
However, you should go to the eye doctor to make sure there is no injury inside your eye.
Subconjunctival Hemorrhages (Eye Bleeding)
A subconjunctival hemorrhage is when blood leaks from one or more breaks in a blood vessel that is between the clear covering (conjunctiva) and the white of your eye (sclera).
Subconjunctival hemorrhages occur frequently and can happen from a small injury to your eye. They may affect just a part of your eye.
They can also include your whole eye, and your white sclera will look bright red.
A subconjunctival hemorrhage doesn’t cause pain. It doesn’t lead to temporary or lasting vision loss.
It takes a several weeks for the blood to go away. Your eye will then look normal.
Don’t expect the insurance company to offer a lot of money for this injury. Expect the claims adjuster to tell you that your subconjunctival hemorrhage is painless.
Send the adjuster photos of your eye bleeding with your demand package.
Other Eye Injuries
Other eye injuries that can be caused in an accident are:
- Traumatic Iritis
- Orbital Blowout Fractures and Hyphemas
Scooter Rider Gets $52,000 for Eye Injury and Other injuries
A man driving a pickup truck hit a man riding a scooter. The scooter rider had blood in his eye.
He also had bruising around his eye. He took photos of the blood and bruising. I sent these photos to the claims adjuster.
He also had pain in his shoulder, lower back, neck and knee pain. However, his eye injury was his biggest injury.
The crash happened in North Miami Beach, Florida. Crawford & Company handled the claim for the company that owned the pickup truck.
Broadspire is Crawford’s global Third-Party Administration (TPA) division.
I represented the scooter rider. We settled for $52,000.
Lady Gets $18,000 for Cut Below Eye from Trip and Fall
Check out our $18,000 settlement for a lady who cut her face when she tripped on a protruding landscaping edge outside a South Miami, Florida restaurant.
Driver Gets $10,000 for Eye Injury in Car Crash
A man was driving his car on I-95 in Miami-Dade County. He stopped in the emergency lane.
A driver crashed into the back of his car. State Farm insured the careless driver.
My client’s injuries included back pain and a big gash to his eyelid. He treated at the Anne Bates Leach eye center, Jackson Memorial Hospital, and Bascon Palmer in Miami, Florida.
State Farm paid its insured’s BI liability limits of $10,000. Unfortunately, the driver and owner of the car that rear ended my client were underinsured.
Our client did not have underinsured motorist insurance, which would have resulted in a much larger payout for the client.
Guest Gets $13,500 after Plate Hits Her Face at South Beach Restaurant
A young lady went out to a popular South Beach (Miami Beach) restaurant located on Ocean drive. While eating at the restaurant, a place struck her face below her eye. (The restaurant closed years later.)
She didn’t know who threw the plate. She went to Mount Sinai Hospital for medical treatment.
She was given stitches to close up the cut. Months after the accident the cut was no longer visible.
I looked at the restaurant’s website. It stated, that “guests shouldn’t be surprised if they hear the sounds of plates breaking. It is just tradition.”
American Empire Surplus Lines insured the restaurant. They’re part of Great America Insurance Group.
They paid the $13,500 settlement. $1,000 of the settlement was from the insurance policy’s Medpay coverage. I did not charge a fee on this $1,000 portion of the settlement.
Patron Wins Case for Eye Injury Outside of Club
This isn’t my case. Pearl Allen, and a companion were patrons of the Gemini Club in the evening.
As the two women left the club in the early morning hours and proceeded to their car in the Gemini Club’s parking lot, a male patron of the club, Leroy Allen (not related to the plaintiff), approached them.
Pearl Allen and her companion rebuffed Leroy Allen’s advances, and the trio exchanged harsh words. After pouring his drink on the companion, Leroy Allen hurled the empty glass, which struck Ms. Allen in the face and permanently blinded her in the left eye.
She sued the bar owner for damages.
The jury returned a verdict for Ms. Allen against the club.
The Florida Supreme Court said that the owner of a place of public entertainment will not be held liable for the unforeseeable acts of third persons, but, specific knowledge of an individual’s dangerous propensities is not the exclusive method of proving foreseeability.
It can be shown by proving that, based on past experience, a proprietor knew of or should have recognized the likelihood of disorderly conduct by third persons in general which might endanger the safety of the proprietor’s patrons. Foreseeability of an intervening cause is a question for the trier of fact. Gibson v. Avis Rent-a-Car System, Inc., 386 So.2d 520 (Fla. 1980).
The Gemini Club had a history of fighting and other disturbances. Prior to the date of the assault, Babrab had employed a “bouncer” to maintain security on the premises.
The bouncer’s duties included patrolling the parking lot and preventing patrons from removing glasses from the bar. Despite urgings to the corporate officers by the bartenders that such security was needed, no such employee was on duty the night of Pearl Allen’s assault.
The evidence was sufficient for the jury reasonably to find that Babrab should have known of the likelihood of injury to patrons caused by disorderly conduct on the part of third parties in general and failed to do anything about it.
It is a close question as to whether this failure caused or contributed to the plaintiff’s injuries, but the jury could have reasonably concluded that, if Babrab had continued its previous policy of hiring security personnel to take glasses from patrons as they left the club and to patrol the parking lot, the injury suffered by Pearl Allen would have been prevented.
The Florida Supreme Court let the woman’s jury verdict stand. The case is Allen v. Babrab, Inc., 438 So.2d 356, 357 (Fla. 1983).
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