Whitmore, CA Personal Injury Law Firms & Lawyers

Yes, you do. We have a statute in Florida that gives you a cause of action for such instances. Make sure you keep the foreign object, because without that you're not going to get anywhere.

If you have insurance coverage for damage to your car you can get your company to pay for the repair less your deductable. If the other driver is uninsured then you may have an uninsured waiver of deductable with your insurance company which means that your deductable is waived and you don't pay it for the repair. If you want to sue the other person and your claim is within the Small Claims Court limits, you can sue the driver in Small Claims Court.

The short answer to your question is "maybe" depending on what was said about you and whether you can prove those statements caused you to be fired. Libel involves a written statement while slander is oral. Both libel and slander are forms of "defamation." To win a case involving defamation the first thing is that the statements must be false. Second, for a statement to be defamatory it must be an assertion of a fact, not an opinion. The statement must have some standard to measure to determine whether it is true or false to be defamatory. For example, if someone said you were a "not a very nice person" then that would not be defamatory as it would it would be opinion rather than a fact as it could not be proven true or false; each person would have their own opinion about how nice you were. Some statements are automatically considered defamatory if they relate to: (1) the commission of a crime involving moral turpitude; (2) an infectious disease; (3) unfitness to perform the duties of an office or employment; (4) prejudice one in his or her profession or trade; or (5) tend to disinherit you. Again, statements involving these items must be false for you to be able to win a defamation case. There are some other elements you must be able to prove to win a defamation case. However, they are rather complicated and difficult to explain in an email. From the information you provided I cannot tell you whether you have a defamation case against the individuals. You might have a case as you indicate the comments involve your "work ethic," which may involve items 3 or 4 listed in the preceding paragraph. It really depends on exactly what was said.