West Palm Beach motorcycle accident lawyer

Shalhoub Law Injury & Accident represents motorcyclists injured in crashes in West Palm Beach and throughout Palm Beach County. That includes claims where PIP does not cover the rider, and the injury threshold that governs what can be recovered. Attorney Paul R. Shalhoub spent years defending insurance companies before he began representing injured people, and he handles every case himself, from the first call through trial.

Florida’s no-fault system does not cover you on a motorcycle. The $10,000 of PIP benefits that pays a car occupant’s first medical bills, and the 14-day rule that goes with it, do not exist for a rider. That single fact changes how the whole claim has to be built.

It is written into the definition. Florida’s no-fault law applies to a “motor vehicle,” which section 627.732(3) defines as a self-propelled vehicle with four or more wheels. A motorcycle has two. It is not excluded by name anywhere — it simply never comes within the definition, so none of the no-fault benefits attach to it.

Attorney Paul R. Shalhoub spent the first part of his career at a Florida insurance-defense firm, working for the carriers. On a motorcycle case that matters more than usual, because the defense of these claims is unusually aggressive and starts with an assumption about the rider that has to be taken apart with evidence.

An honest answer, including when it is no.

Where you probably do not. You were knocked off at walking pace in a parking lot, you are bruised, you were checked once and discharged, and the argument is about the fairing. That is a property damage claim.

Where you almost certainly do. You have no PIP, so any real injury means bills with no automatic payer and a coverage order somebody has to work out. Add any of these and it is not close: you were hospitalized; the driver says you came out of nowhere, were speeding or were lane splitting; the driver was uninsured; you were not wearing a helmet and someone has raised it; or somebody died.

The consultation is free and it is with Paul, so finding out which of those you are in costs nothing.

This is the first practical problem, and it arrives within days. The emergency department wants a payer and there is no no-fault carrier to bill.

Florida does not require a private passenger vehicle owner to carry any bodily injury liability coverage at all. The state’s minimum is $10,000 of property damage liability and $10,000 of PIP. A driver can be entirely legal, put a rider in a trauma center, and carry nothing that pays for the injury. That is why uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage on your own motorcycle policy is the single most valuable thing a Florida rider can buy, and the first document Paul asks for.

With no no-fault coverage behind you, who pays first is a decision rather than a default. It is the question to settle in week one, not month three.

Call (561) 208-5058 Free case review

Florida’s rule is in section 316.211, and it is more specific than most riders realize.

If you were not wearing a helmet

You still have a claim. Riding without a helmet does not cause a collision, and in Florida the defense cannot simply tell a jury you had no helmet and leave it there. To put the issue in front of a jury at all, the defense has to show both that not wearing one was unreasonable in the circumstances and that it actually caused the injuries being claimed — a causation showing that usually needs a biomechanical expert and that frequently fails.

It also only ever reaches head injuries. A rider with a shattered pelvis and no head injury has nothing to argue about. And if you were riding lawfully under the over-21 exception, you were by definition carrying the $10,000 in medical benefits the statute requires, which is both an answer to the argument and a source of payment.

The county’s own figures, from the state’s annual report rather than from anybody’s marketing page.

Source: FLHSMV, Florida Traffic Crash Facts Annual Report 2024 — Palm Beach County table and the statewide vehicle-type tables.

Put plainly: in Palm Beach County in 2024, roughly one motorcycle crash in fifteen killed someone. Deaths rose by half while crashes rose by eight percent, which means the crashes that happened were more severe, not simply more numerous.

The roads matter here. Florida’s Turnpike between PGA Boulevard and Indiantown Road carries about one heavy vehicle in five. I-95 through West Palm Beach runs roughly 219,908 vehicles a day including 14,954 trucks between Okeechobee Boulevard and Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. 45th Street at I-95 is the city’s most truck-heavy arterial at about 11 percent (FDOT, 2025). A rider shares all of it.

Three local patterns are worth naming because they decide where the evidence is. The downtown West Palm Beach grid — Clematis, Olive, Dixie, Flagler — produces door openings, parking maneuvers and left turns at low speed with high injury, and it is dense with private cameras that are overwritten in days. The six-lane suburban arterials — Okeechobee, Military Trail, Forest Hill, Southern, Belvedere, Congress — produce the left-turn and lane-change collisions at speeds that put a rider in a trauma center, usually at a signaled intersection where timing data exists. And the western and coastal routes riders actually choose on a weekend, including A1A and the roads out toward the Glades, produce single-vehicle and road-surface cases where the only evidence is the surface itself and it gets resurfaced.

If you were taken for trauma care, the county has exactly two state-approved trauma centers, both Level I: Delray Medical Center and St. Mary’s Medical Center. Those records are the backbone of the claim and should be obtained complete, imaging included, not just the radiology reports. The films themselves are what a treating physician relies on to give a permanency opinion, and a summary report is not a substitute when that opinion is the thing the case turns on.

1. Get treated, and keep treating. With no PIP there is no 14-day rule, but a gap in treatment is read by a carrier as recovery, and on a motorcycle claim it will be.
2. Find every policy before you need it. Your motorcycle policy, your health insurance, any medical payments coverage, your UM coverage, and any policy in your household. A rider usually has more coverage than they think and does not know which to use first.
3. Photograph the bike and your gear before anything is repaired or thrown away. The helmet, the jacket and the boots are evidence. A scuffed helmet answers a causation argument that is otherwise expensive to fight.
4. Get the crash report, but expect a wait. Florida crash reports are confidential for 60 days after filing, released in that window only to those involved, their legal representatives, insurers and certain others (s. 316.066(2)(a)).
5. Do not give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurer. On a motorcycle claim the questions are built around the assumptions listed above.
6. Have the other vehicle’s data preserved. Passenger vehicles do carry event data recorders, and that data is routinely lost when the car is repaired or sold.
7. Watch the deadline. Two years for a negligence claim accruing after 24 March 2023 (s. 95.11(5)(a)). A death claim runs under the Wrongful Death Act — see wrongful death. A government vehicle changes the timing entirely.

Your own share of fault still matters. Under section 768.81(6), a party found more than 50 percent at fault for their own harm recovers nothing; below that line, recovery is reduced in proportion. On a motorcycle claim the defense will work hard to move you across that line, which is the practical reason the physical evidence has to be gathered in the first days.

A carrier handling a motorcycle claim knows two things about you from the first call: you have no no-fault benefits, and bills are arriving. Both shape how the claim is handled.

That is not a conspiracy, it is arithmetic. An adjuster with a file showing an unrepresented rider, an unpaid trauma bill and no PIP has every reason to make an early, modest offer while the pressure is highest and before anyone knows what the injury will cost. It is the same calculation Paul used to make from the other side of the desk.

What changes it:

• Order the coverages properly before anything is paid. Health insurance, medical payments coverage, the $10,000 policy behind a helmet exemption, then UM. Paying the wrong one first creates liens that cost real money to unwind later.
• Decline the recorded statement. You are not required to give one to the other driver’s insurer. The questions are built around the assumptions on this page.
• Read what you are asked to sign. A broad medical authorization hands over a lifetime of records so the carrier can argue the injury predates the crash. A release ends the claim permanently, whatever is discovered afterward.
• Put the permanency opinion in the file early. If the threshold is in the case, the opinion is the case. If it is not, the opinion still supports the value.
• Deal with the lien before you settle, not after. A health plan’s reimbursement right can take a large share of a recovery, and what it is entitled to is frequently less than what it first demands.

The crash type tells you which evidence decides the case, which is most of what the first week is for.

Notice how much of this lives in something physical that gets repaired, scrapped or resurfaced. That is the recurring theme, and the reason a motorcycle case rewards early work more than almost any other.

No two run the same way, but the shape is predictable enough to set out honestly.

Throughout, one attorney handles the file. You are not passed from a signing lawyer to a litigation department to a settlement department, which is how most volume firms in this market are built.

You speak to Paul, not an intake screener. The consultation is free, and he will tell you honestly whether you need a lawyer at all — some claims do not. If he takes the case, the preservation letters and the notices to the insurers go out that day, and the calls to you stop. You treat; he deals with the other side. Nothing is settled without your decision, and you see the net figure before you sign anything.

The whole process, step by step