Meet John Thomas
John Thomas is a Jacksonville personal injury attorney who focuses on auto accidents and premises liability cases. Having owned his own law firm and served as both a pre-litigation and litigation attorney over the span of his career, John has an incredible depth of experience to draw from. He’s handled tractor-trailer accidents, wrongful deaths, catastrophic injuries, construction accidents, and so much more. With several multi-million dollar verdicts to his credit, John Thomas is exactly who you want to call when you need a top accident attorney in Jacksonville.
Farah and Farah is Indeed Large But It Still Has a Family Feel
Farah and Farah really does offer the best of both worlds in terms of having all of the resources attorneys could ever need, the ability to bounce ideas off great attorneys around you, and more experience in different areas of the law and even specialty areas. Even with all of these resources, it still feels like a family. Eddie and Chuck have deliberately made our firm to not be so rigid or corporate that us attorneys then lack flexibility. I love knowing they trust in my experience enough to let me decide the best course of action for my clients.
I came from a small firm environment and even owned my own law practice for a few years. This was great exposure and I learned a lot, but owning a law firm means I was doing everything from admin to computer problems. Now, I get to focus 100% of my talents on helping people who are hurt through no fault of their own and need an advocate to get what they deserve.
Proving the Insurance Carrier is Responsible When They Wrongly Denied Your Claim
After practicing personal injury law for so many years, I have seen every way imaginable for the giant insurance carriers to delay, downplay, or outright deny a rightful claim. Through the process of litigation, we can prove they were wrong in their actions after your accident and hold them responsible for paying the full and final compensation you’re due. After an accident, there are real damages—physical, monetary, and even emotional. These “life costs” need to be paid to the client.
I just settled a recent case where the insurance company denied all liability and tried to use ridiculous tactics not to pay my client. In the end, they paid the full policy limits, upwards of $1,000,000. Getting my client from a $0 offer to $1,000,000 is a good feeling. In this line of work, you’re always learning. There are always some new nuances in aspects of the law, as well as engineering or medicine that can really make a difference in the case. I never want to stay stagnant and always look to get better and sharpen my skills. To me, it’s called practicing law because you’re always practicing towards perfection.
Soy Tu Abogado – I Am Your Attorney
I get to handle a lot of the Spanish-speaking clients here at Farah and Farah’s Jacksonville office because I spent two years living in Ecuador while on a mission trip. Because I’m a Spanish-speaking attorney, I see so many cases around the state where people who don’t speak English are marginalized after an accident.
A case I’ll never forget was with a client who lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. Almost everyone involved in the accident, from the police officer to eyewitnesses to the defendant, all blamed my client for the collision. This client only spoke Spanish and I found out during litigation that no one had asked him his version of the events. He was in the hospital and had just had his leg amputated when the police officer walked in and gave him a ticket. We had to do extensive traffic engineering to recreate the exact sequence of events. We found no one had accounted for the engineering analysis that proved what the client said happened was true. In the end, I got this breadwinner for his family a seven-figure settlement before trial.
It was such a gratifying experience because I was able to get him the compensation he deserved to take care of his family. While the legal system could never replace a limb, it can still provide a way for this man to provide for his family.
Serving the Underserved is So Important to Me
I’m good at taking depositions and having a strategy for how to prove the other party is responsible. When you’re taking a case through litigation, you have to have a game plan, and taking strategic depositions is a big part of that. Acting in the clients best interest means it doesn’t matter where they came from, all that matters is getting them everything they deserve for what they’ve endured. Standing up for those who can’t stand for themselves is what I do every day.
A huge part of my life is my service in my local community and I love that Farah and Farah places such a big emphasis on community involvement. I’m active in my church and consider it an honor to serve my community in many ways. I support the Jacksonville Speech and Hearing Center, do extensive work with the interfaith community in Arlington, participate in school drives, and generally do what I can to give back my time and effort. My wife and three kids strive to live in a way to try and help out as much as we can. Now, if it’s football season, I’ll either be cheering wildly at my son’s games or the Jaguars, depending on the day. In my downtime, I love adding to my collection of 19th-century plein air art, classic cars, gardening, and reading.
