Similar personal injury attorneys in Coral Gables
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
About James Blecke
Jim Blecke has served as of counsel to The Haggard Law Firm since 2007, bringing one of the deepest appellate practices in Florida personal injury law. Raised in the Midwest, he graduated from Ohio State in 1969, earned his law degree from the University of Florida, and passed the Florida Bar in 1971. After four years as a Judge Advocate in the United States Marine Corps, where he reached the rank of Captain, he began private practice in Miami in 1976. He has since served as appellate counsel in more than 350 reported cases, primarily in personal injury and wrongful death, professional malpractice, and insurance coverage disputes.
His significant reported decisions include Nissan Motor Co. v. Phlieger, King v. Cutter Laboratories, and Villazon v. Prudential Health Care Plan, which established HMO liability for HMO contract physicians. He works closely with lead trial counsel in pretrial preparation and during trial, then assumes primary responsibility in the appellate courts. He is AV rated by Martindale-Hubbell, was among the first group of civil trial attorneys board certified by the Florida Bar in 1983, and received the Florida Bar Appellate Practice Section's first Pro Bono Award in 2002.
Proven verdicts and settlements
Yaimi Guevara Machado was locked out of her room at the Chesapeake Motel in Hialeah in the early hours of April 10, 2016, and the front desk refused to let her back in. Motel security had already been warned about an intoxicated man who was not a registered guest, Ronald Lopez Andrade, after he harassed a housekeeper, and left him on the property anyway. Machado was killed soon afterward, and her body was found in a grassy area on the motel grounds. A Miami-Dade jury awarded her parents $12 million against the motel's owner, The Waves of Hialeah, Inc., on December 1, 2017, assigning her no share of the fault. Florida's Third District Court of Appeal affirmed the verdict in full on February 19, 2020, rejecting the motel's challenges to excluded evidence and to a directed verdict that cleared her companion of any share of blame.
Bobby Hopkins Jr. was shot and killed at a Gainesville car wash in May 2021, four months after another man had been shot dead at or just outside the same lot. The owner, Kokomo Key Properties, Inc., had put no cameras, fence or gate on the property in between. An Alachua County jury found the company negligent in December 2023 and awarded $3,750,000 to each of Hopkins' two children plus $9,000 in funeral costs, $7,509,000 in all, while assigning Hopkins himself 25 percent of the fault. Florida's comparative negligence statute cuts the recovery by that share, leaving about $5.63 million, and the First District Court of Appeal affirmed per curiam on October 24, 2025.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.
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Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.