About the Panama City Law Firm Syfrett & Dykes

Our experience in handling personal injury cases is extensive. We have collectively handled hundreds of personal injury cases ranging from automobile accidents/car wrecks, motorcycle accidents, pedestrian accidents, defective product cases, and wrongful death cases. Whether the case is in Panama City, Panama City Beach, Marianna, Chipley, Vernon, Blountstown, Port St. Joe, Apalachicola or anywhere in between we have handled a case from there before.

Our experience has taught us several things about handling personal injury cases and we strive to use our experience to benefit each and everyone of our clients in every case we handle. Specifically, after an automobile accident, motorcycle accident or wrongful death cases doing the basics and doing them well is what makes the difference for our client’s time and time again. Experience has taught us that thorough investigative work produces excellent results when done early and done correctly.

From locating potential witnesses, obtaining photographs or videos of the crash location, determining vehicle speeds, lighting conditions, traffic flows, exact location of impact and all facts in between we know and understand how important a thorough investigation is. In the past we have filmed intersections and traffic flows, photographed intersections, scenes, vehicles, motorcycles, roadways, retained traffic accident experts, went back to the scene with the investigating police officer to learn more, to literally taking roadway samples from a narrow country road where a fatal collision had occurred. In our experience, nothing beats knowing the scene, walking the scene, personally inspecting the vehicles, and making sure our documentation of these facts is in order.

In addition to our investigation we also know that the information given to the insurance company early on and throughout the case can make a critical difference in how they view the case. Therefore, if our investigation is not complete we may chose NOT to notify the Defendant’s insurance company until we have gathered all the facts we need to fully substantiate our client’s case. On the other hand, if our client needs a surgery or has already had a surgery, we want the insurance company to have this information sooner so that they can properly set their reserves (amount set aside for potential settlement later) accordingly.

Reserves are something insurance companies are required to do. Each time a loss occurs a potential claim may be made against the insurance company and therefore they have to assess a number for accounting and liability purposes of what they think/project that the case may be worth. The number the insurance company initially sets on what a case is worth is known as “the reserve.” To try and later settle the case above the reserve limit can be a very difficult thing to do. Therefore, when a case changes from a liability (fault standpoint) or an injury standpoint (surgery or planned surgery) we want the insurance company to know this information and adjust their reserves by raising them appropriately so that the best recovery can be made for our client when the time comes.

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