Wellington personal injury lawyer

Palm Beach County publishes the list of streets that produce its worst crashes. Five Wellington roads are on it, and three of the five are roads the village maintains itself.

The Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency maintains a High Injury Network: the roadway segments carrying the heaviest concentration of fatal and serious injury crashes in the county. Its 2025 Vision Zero Action Plan puts that network at 130 corridors covering 276 miles and reports that 38 percent of fatal crashes and 36 percent of serious injury crashes happen on 4 percent of the county’s streets. Ninety-five percent of the network is posted at 35 miles per hour or higher. Wellington adopted a Vision Zero policy on July 12, 2022 and an action plan of its own on August 15, 2024, one of only three municipalities in the county with a plan on record with the agency.

The agency publishes that network as mapped data, scored four separate ways — all crashes, pedestrian crashes, bicycle crashes, and crashes in the dark or on unlit roadway. A road that qualifies on all four is the worst case the county measures. These are the Wellington streets on the 2025 network, with what the data flags and who is responsible for the pavement.

Forest Hill Boulevard is the spine of it: four miles inside the village, five to six lanes, posted as high as 50, and flagged on every measure plus pedestrian and bicycle crashes after dark. State Road 7 runs eight lanes at a posted 50.

What makes Wellington different from the rest of the county is the other three. Almost everywhere else, the high-injury roads belong to the state or to the county. In Wellington, South Shore Boulevard, Wellington Trace and 120th Avenue South are village streets, and every one of them is flagged for crashes in the dark. That is a different kind of case from an eight-lane arterial at rush hour: a two-lane residential collector at night, where lighting and sight lines are the argument and the road belongs to the village.

Two findings in the plan matter more to a claim than the totals do. The most common fatal and serious injury crashes on the network are angle, left turn and rear end collisions. And just over half the countywide network is state road rather than city street — which is exactly what Wellington’s share of it is not.

Angle and left-turn crashes are the ones insurers fight, because who had the right of way is rarely settled by the damage alone. That is where Florida Statute 768.81 does its work: a claimant found more than 50 percent responsible recovers nothing, and below that line the recovery is cut by the share assigned. An adjuster asking about your speed and your line of sight at Forest Hill Boulevard and State Road 7 is not making conversation. What the 51 percent bar covers, and what it does not.

Rear-end crashes carry the opposite problem. Fault is usually conceded and the fight moves to the injury: whether a neck or back complaint came from this crash or from something older. That argument is won or lost in the medical records, which is why the 14-day deadline in Florida Statute 627.736(1)(a) ends more claims than any dispute about fault. How Paul handles a Palm Beach County car accident claim.

All five Wellington corridors carry a dark-roadway flag, and three of the five are village-maintained. Where lighting, sight lines or signal timing contributed to a crash, the question stops being only about the two drivers, and the government that has to be notified is the village itself.

Three practical facts about a Wellington claim that are easier to establish now than six months from now.

The hospital. Florida has verified only two Level I trauma centers in Palm Beach County — Delray Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center — on the Department of Health’s trauma center list updated July 23, 2026. Palm Beach County Fire Rescue splits them geographically: St. Mary’s covers traumatic injuries north of Southern Boulevard, Delray Medical Center covers the south. Wellington sits south of that line, so a serious trauma out of Wellington is normally taken to Delray Medical Center — a long haul east from the village, and part of the reason the Health Care District of Palm Beach County operates the Trauma Hawk helicopters that Palm Beach County Fire Rescue staffs. That matters to the claim because the trauma record is the spine of it: the imaging, the admission note and the discharge summary are what an adjuster and later a jury read. If you went by ambulance, the 14-day treatment deadline took care of itself. The claims that die on that deadline belong to people who declined transport, felt worse on day three, and waited. Pain that starts days after a crash, and the order coverage pays your medical bills in.

The road. Who owns the pavement decides who can be sued if the pavement helped cause the crash. State Road 7 is a state road under FDOT and Forest Hill Boulevard is part state and part village. South Shore Boulevard, Wellington Trace and 120th Avenue South are village streets. A claim against any of them runs through Florida Statute 768.28, and the rules there are unforgiving: the claim must be presented in writing within three years, recovery is capped at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident unless the Legislature passes a claim bill, and the agency has six months to respond before silence counts as a denial. One wrinkle that is easy to get wrong — a claim against a city or a county goes to that government only, while a claim involving a state road also has to be presented to the Department of Financial Services. Three years sounds generous until you put it beside the two-year deadline for the underlying injury suit. Every deadline that can end a Florida injury claim, with the statute for each.

The courthouse. Wellington is in the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit. Under Florida Statute 34.01(1)(c)3, county court handles actions filed on or after January 1, 2023 where the amount in controversy is $50,000 or less; anything above that is a circuit court case. Circuit civil sits at the Main Judicial Complex, 205 North Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach — downtown, where Paul’s office is. The branch courthouses sit in Palm Beach Gardens, Delray Beach and Belle Glade. Most claims settle and never see a courtroom, but the venue is why a Wellington case is a West Palm Beach case, and why having the attorney in that courthouse’s own city is not a small thing. What Paul Shalhoub handles across Palm Beach County, and the trial background behind it.

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