Pedestrian Receives $255,000 Settlement After Crosswalk Accident

Ms. Stanford, a healthy weekend athlete who enjoyed vigorous activities, was a pedestrian attempting to cross Northwest 3rd Street right in front of The Children’s Court House in Downtown Miami.   Ms. Stanford followed all the rules by pressing the button for the crosswalk and waiting for traffic to stop. This particular high pedestrian traffic crosswalk has bright flashing yellow lights on both sides of the street and in the median to alert oncoming motorist that there is a pedestrian in the crosswalk. As Ms. Stanford began to cross the street she was violently struck by a BMW SUV. Ms. Stanford suffered multiple serious injuries to her ankle, ribs, wrists and knee. Ms. Stanford was rushed to the Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Of all of Ms. Stanford’s injuries, the injury to her ankle was the most significant because the impact had damaged an ankle replacement that she had done a few years before. The previous ankle replacement had healed, and Ms. Stanford had started an athletic regiment that had her walking and biking on a daily basis. Ms. Stanford immediately had her ankle evaluated by a top orthopedic surgeon and it was concluded that the ankle prosthetic needed to be revised. Ms. Stanford had revision surgery to try and repair any damage from the impact to her ankle. After weeks of recovery it was determined that the revision was not successful and a complete replacement of the prosthetic was necessary.

Thanks to a referral from Brett Panter’s law school classmate, Lourdes Ponns, Ms. Stanford contacted Panter, Panter and Sampedro to help with the process of securing a recovery for her damages. The driver and owner of the SUV had $20,000 of combined available insurance. Ms. Stanford had underinsured insurance with Progressive. Ms. Stanford had purchased this insurance and was paying premiums on her UM policy for this exact scenario. Once Progressive concluded its investigation, it made an offer of $88,000. This offer was well below the value of the case considering all of the injuries suffered by Ms. Stanford.

Accordingly, Mr. Brett Panter and his associate Al Del Risco filed suit and worked hard to assure Ms. Stanford received an amount of money that was commensurate with her injuries. Shortly thereafter, the Panter, Panter and Sampedro team was able to secure a settlement of $255,000 for Ms. Stanford.