Fourth DCA Case March 25, 2015 – Estate of Man Electrocuted Sues FPL

If a person dies, they can still bring a lawsuit through their estate, and a Personal Representative is named as Plaintiff as PR of the Estate of the Plaintiff. This includes wrongful death cases which usually stem from a claim of negligence. An opinion from the Fourth DCA that was issued yesterday (March 25, 2015) shows the difficult task a PR may have in showing negligence without a live plaintiff. These are the same problems that arise in will contests and other adversarial probate disputes. 

• The Court recently issued its opinion in the case of Vitrano (as PR) v. FPL
• The Court denied the attempt to get a jury instruction for negligence per se which is a fancy way of saying that a party may be negligent for violating a statute if that violation harms the “protected class” of persons the statute was meant to protect.
• The decedent here was electrocuted somehow through the fault of Florida Power and Light (FPL) while he was trimming a tree for a third party.
• The plaintiff wanted the jury to know about FPL’s violations of the National Electric Safety Code (NESC).
• The third party was told by FPL that they would trim the suspect trees and the third party instructed them that they had already told their contractor (the decedent) to do so.
• The Plaintiff sued FPL alleging they knew of the dangerous condition and attempted to use two violations of NESC about tree trimming but the Court found that the decedent was not in the protected class. 

Whats all this got to do with your Florida Probate issues and estate planning?

• Much like the Plaintiffs in this case in a probate dispute you will not have the testator (decedent) there to tell you what you want. The only thing there is the estate planning documents and relatives that almost always have interests just like the wife in this case that had an interest.

Want to read the entire opinion? Check it out here!