This is a tough question and I have addressed it earlier in the pandemic during the shutdown. I am regularly discussing this issue with my clients. As a starting matter, while I have been a lawyer for 26 years as of the writing of this blog, this is my first pandemic. And of course, it is everyone’s first (and hopefully last) pandemic!
So we don’t know how juries are going to treat gaps in care due to people’s fear of going to the doctor because of the pandemic. The legal defense when someone doesn’t go to the doctor for a period of time in the middle of their treatment (gap in treatment) is that if they were really hurt, they wouldn’t have missed the doctor appointments and must not have been in pain, etc. Now, everybody has lived through the pandemic and has been affected in one way or another, so presumptively the juries will be forgiving of these sort of gaps but we don’t know. In fact, there have not been jury trials in South Florida for injury cases since the pandemic, so we haven’t seen any of them map out quite yet and likely with the backlog there will be in the court system due to the pandemic, we may not see any cases from this time period for several years.
There are some other options. First, you can do some tele-health with your doctor, to document you injuries during the times that you don’t feel comfortable going to the doctor. And most doctors nowadays are doing some form of telehealth. That certainly solves the problem in the short term. Otherwise, you may simply want to have the doctor office document the reason why you are not coming in for therapy, etc. as being due to the pandemic.
If you or a loved one has been in any sort of accident where you feel someone else was at fault, please feel free to call the Florida accident lawyer at Drucker Law Offices – Gary J. Drucker, Esquire. Drucker Law Offices offers a free consultation in accident cases and the personal injury lawyer will discuss your case with you. There is no lawyer fee unless a recovery is made by the injury lawyer in your case.
