Are witnesses important in a Florida trip and fall case?

Yes, but not absolutely necessary. If we have independent witnesses we need to make sure that we’re gathering their name, address, telephone number, whatever identifying information that we can gather from those witnesses in order to be able to talk to them in the future. The value that these witnesses bring is that they’re independent. These people don’t have a stake in the game. They’re not looking to be able to recover anything from either party. They are independent witnesses. Let me give you a case example.

There was a four-way stop in a neighborhood and my client, who was inside of vehicle number one was at that four-way stop. My client says she came to a complete stop and then proceeded into the intersection. The adverse party, the person that we ended up suing in the case also says that she came to a stop and proceeded into the intersection and here’s where the impact happened.

My client’s view of the other driver was that she blew the stop sign. What did we have? At this corner, we had a young woman drinking her coffee on the front porch that we were able to get in touch with that confirmed our client’s side of the story was that the adverse party blew the stop sign, and therefore it was her fault for the injury. Having that kind of person involved in the case made the difference in being able to resolve it.