What is the Process for a Personal Injury Claim
Summary
Whether you get into a car accident, have a product liability issue, or suffered an injury, the process remains the same. Beginning the process of filing a personal injury claim can be intimidating, but is very straightforward when you have an experienced lawyer who you can trust at your side.
Full Transcript
Once a lawsuit, a complaint is filed, that really starts the process of litigation.
And one of the first things that's going to happen once the complaint has been filed is there's going to be an exchange of documents between you, the plaintiff, and the defendant. And they're going to be a series of questions. It's called written discovery.
They're going to send us questions, and we're going to send them questions to try to get more facts about what happened in your case. And that begins the process.
Once there's been a significant amount of written discovery completed, then there are going to be depositions. Those are oral testimony that a plaintiff and a defendant will give. They're going to sit down and they're going to put their hand up, and they're going to swear to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, and they're going to answer a bunch of questions about the case.
And depositions are really important because they have an impact on a person's credibility. It becomes very, very clear when you're sitting down whether you're telling the story accurately. Oftentimes people have problems remembering all of the details of what happened, but so long as you remember for the most part what happened, why it happened, how it happened, those are the kinds of things that you'll talk about at a deposition.
But depositions are very important because when a plaintiff does well at a deposition, that gives the defendant an opportunity to assess your credibility. And if you come off as a very credible person, oftentimes that can lead a defendant to want to settle the case sooner rather than later.
That's generally to the advantage for most people. Most people don't want to wait 18-months, 24-months before actually going to trial. A lot of people don't even want to go to trial. A lot of people don't want to sit in a courtroom. They don't want to be on a witness stand.
So one of the ways that can be avoided is to make a very good, strong showing from the very beginning of your case, because it lets the defendants know that you're a credible person, what happened to you shouldn't have happened to you, and they're responsible for it. It makes sense for them to actually take responsibility for the injury that you sustain. In our system here in the United States, the way that we get people to be responsible is through money damages. And ultimately, that's what we're going after.
Now, because of COVID a lot of depositions are done via zoom. For instance, if you are being deposed, and you're being deposed remotely or via zoom, you're sitting at your home, or you're sitting at your office in a closed environment, and you're being asked questions by the defense lawyer, for instance.
Involved in the deposition is your lawyer, I would also be present, but I'd be calling or zooming in from another location than you. Then there would be a court reporter that is taking down everything stenographically that's being said, because a deposition is a formal proceeding and what you say and what others say has to be taken down verbatim. There's the defense lawyer that's going to be asking you questions. At a deposition, there are three people that are involved. It's the court reporter, your lawyer, and the defense lawyer. The deposition is very different from a trial.
Depositions typically take place early on in the case. And again, it's an opportunity for the defendant to ask you questions under oath to make sure you're giving the most accurate and truthful testimony possible. But have no fear, you're not the only person that is going to be deposed. As your lawyer, I get to depose people that have relevant information about your case. I can depose the defendant.
I can depose the defendant's employer. I can depose the defendant's friends and family members. I have a lot of leeway as to who I can depose. And so it's not just you that is going through this process, but it's everybody that's involved in the process that ultimately is going to have their deposition taken. Whether you testify at trial is a very different question than whether you will have to testify at a deposition.
Truthfully you'll have to give deposition testimony if you want a resolution to your case because the defendants want to make sure that what you're saying is true. They want to understand your side of the story. They want to understand your perspective of what happened. And the best way for them to do that is to have you sit before them and to answer questions under oath. People just generally tell the truth when they are answering questions under the penalty of perjury.
You will have to give deposition testimony because that's what an insurance company or some defendant would require you to do in order for them to evaluate your case. If it's a case where you've been injured, not only will they want you to have a deposition, but they will also want you to go through what we call as a defendant's medical exam, where a doctor that is hired by them gets to evaluate you based on the injury that you're claiming in your particular lawsuit.
So a defendant will require your deposition, and they will require a medical exam so that they can make sure that the injuries that you're claiming that they caused, they'll want you to make sure that you are examined by their doctor so their doctor can confirm that you, in fact, are injured and that the injury likely came from the negligence or recklessness of a particular defendant?
Once you have had your deposition taken, once depositions have been taken of all of the people that have factual information about what took place once you've had your medical exam and everyone knows what your current medical state is, or what your health is, and once you have completed being treated by your own doctors, then we get to the point where we have experts that are going to have their depositions taken.
The experts generally, in a case, in a personal injury case, those experts are your medical doctors, the doctors that have treated you, the doctors that know you the best, the doctors that are familiar with your circumstances, the doctors that are familiar with your injury. And once those doctors have had their depositions taken, then your lawyer will take the depositions of the defendant's experts. Because they're going to have a whole host of experts that are going to try to say that you're not hurt as bad as you say you're hurt, or you shouldn't have, or you didn't need to be out of work for as long as you were. And so there's going to be a back and forth where we're deposing their people, they're deposing your people.
And ultimately, when we get to the point where everybody has been deposed, there is the looming trial date. And as we get closer and closer to the trial date, that's when things get a lot more busy and there's a lot more work to be done. Because the courts require a lot of documents to be filed, a lot of documents to be exchanged with the other side.
There's a lot of discussion between both sides because we still want to see whether or not this can be resolved before going to trial. Trials are very taxing. Trials are very expensive. And as your lawyer, I'm more than happy to go to trial. But if I can resolve the case before having to expend all of the monies that are necessary to put on a trial, I'm more inclined to do that simply because that could potentially be more money that goes into your pocket as opposed to the pockets of really expensive experts that have to close down their businesses to attend a trial.
So that's just an incentive for your lawyer to be someone that is willing to talk to the other side to see whether or not the case can be resolved before an actual trial date.
Final Thoughts
Many personal injury lawyers, including myself, will give a free initial consultation so you can determine if I am someone you feel comfortable sharing sensitive information with, and working with for at least several months to as long as a few years.