In Tallahassee, Florida a law demanding that a business or person whose negligence caused an injury pay the damages of another guilty party who cannot pay in a personal injury suit was repealed on the 30th of March. This was the first time in 30 years that any such act had been taken by the state of Florida and served as a major defeat for the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, who remained vigilant in their defese of the peoples’ rights. With the law repealed, guilty parties who have injured someone needing compensation need only pay their “percentage” of guilt in the accident, which often leaves the victims undercompensated and in serious financial and medical crisis. The repeal of the joint-and-several doctrine was deemed as a “fair” move, so that big businesses wouldn’t be “victimized” by having to pay a greater amount of money than expected. The fact remains that the guilty party is still guilty – regardless of “percentage” – and the injured party requires a certain amount of money to get back to normal life.
Salameh Abughalia of Greenacres filed a lawsuit against JFK hospital in Lantana in order to pay for the bills left behind from his 44-year-old wife, Zainab. Because of staff at the JFK hospital, Zainab brain swelled beyond normal capacity when she went in for a procedure to remove a brain tumor. She is now deprived of short-term memory and must stay in a wheelchair at a nursing home 20 minutes away from her loved ones, including her four children. Salameh works 14 hours a day just to keep this meager lifestyle functioning and still can’t quite make ends meet. Abughalia’s lawyer stated that if the joint-and-several law was repealed, he would be “left with not enough money to care for her needs for the rest of her life…. These children would not have the money that they need to start undoing the damage by the effective death of their mother.”
