Basic Stages of a Personal Injury Case
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Every personal injury claim is different, but there are some general stages that most personal injury claims follow. We will give you some basic information about those stages here. If you want even more detailed information, we have more detailed articles and videos about the various stages of a personal injury claim that we’re linking to down below.
In most instances, the easiest way to harm your personal injury claim is by settling the case before you have recovered from your injuries. So the first phase of a personal injury case is your healing stage.
While you’re healing, we’ll do some basic investigation of the claim. We’ll let the insurance company know we represent you so that the company won’t harass you. We’ll also do the basic investigation necessary for the claim. If there is a dispute about liability, we’ll start investigating that part of the case. If we need to find the correct parties, we’ll start an investigation on that. If there is concern about the amount of insurance available, we will do an investigation there. Each case is different, but we will take the time while you are healing to start the basic investigation of your personal injury claim.
How long will this stage last? We don’t know. That is up to you and your doctors. This stage of your personal injury claim will take however long it takes you to heal. We won’t rush that.
Once you are healed or you are as good as you are going to get, then we start the next stage of your personal injury claim. The first thing we do is gather the records to help prove the damages of your claim.
The most important part of this stage is gathering the medical records and bills from all of your medical providers. I’ll give you a warning that this is a process that typically takes longer and is more frustrating than we would like it to be. But there are just some medical providers who are really backed up and delay us getting all your records.
In addition to medical records, we will also gather other records to help establish your damages. In many cases, you will have missed time off from work. If that’s the case, we’ll work with you to try and document how much money you lost from missing work.
Other cases may also require additional documentation. Will you need future medical care? If so, we may need to get a letter from your doctor outlining that care and the projected costs or hire an expert witness to do the same. Do you have losses from items damaged in your claim? We may need to track that down.
Whatever your losses are, we’ll work to get the documentation we need to prove those losses to the insurance company. Once we get that, we’ll next start writing a settlement package to the insurance company. We’ll go through a couple of drafts of it and send it to you for your review. Once we are all satisfied with the package, we’ll send it off to the insurance company.
We typically give an insurance company two weeks to respond. If we don’t hear from them, then we’ll reach out to them again. Insurance companies will typically respond after we contact them a second time.
That first response from the insurance company is often telling. At that point, we usually know whether there is a chance that we’ll be able to negotiate a settlement of your personal injury claim or whether we will need to file suit. If we think there is a chance to resolve the claim, we’ll engage in negotiations with the insurance company and hopefully settle your claim. But if we get an initial response that leads us to believe that negotiation is a waste of time, then we’ll typically advise you to file suit.
If we decide that we need to file a lawsuit to help you pursue your personal injury claim, the first thing we do is file a lawsuit. This lawsuit is typically a short document that sets out who we are suing and the basics of the claim. We will prepare the lawsuit and then file it in the appropriate court.
Once we file the lawsuit, the clerk of the court will issue a citation. This is a document that a process server or constable will serve on the defendant (the party you’re suing) to let the party know the lawsuit has been initiated.
Once the defendant has been served, the defendant has roughly 30 days to file an answer in the lawsuit. The answer is typically a form response from the lawyer that the insurance company has hired to represent the defendant. It doesn’t tell us much other than who the defendant’s lawyer will be.
Once we get the answer, we move into stage two of the personal injury lawsuit.
Once the defendant files an answer, then it starts the written discovery stage of the case.
Within 30 days of the defendant filing an answer, the parties must exchange Initial Disclosures. In their initial disclosures, each party must give a brief statement of the party’s claims or defenses, identify any parties who should be involved in the lawsuit but are not, identify potential witnesses in the suit, and share the basic documents relevant to the lawsuit. At this point, you start to get a better picture of the contentions that the other party is making.
After the parties exchange the initial disclosures, then they can send interrogatories, requests for production, and requests for admissions. Interrogatories are additional questions you can ask the other side about things that are specific to your type of personal injury claim. Requests for production allow you to ask for additional documents that might be relevant to your personal injury claim. And requests for admissions ask the other party to admit some undisputed factual issues about the case.
A party has 30 days to respond to interrogatories, a request for production or requests for admissions. But that 30 days doesn’t end this stage. In many (or even most) cases, we end up having to argue with the other side to get all of the information we think we are entitled to receive. For example, in a trucking case, we might ask for logs showing the truck driver’s speed and other information. The trucking company, if they provide any of it, may provide a small sample of that information (maybe the few minutes before the wreck), and we will have to file motions to try and get the rest of the information that is needed.
Once we have the information we need, then we move to the next stage of your personal injury claim, the deposition stage.
After we have the basic information and documents to understand the other side’s basic contentions regarding your personal injury claim, we start the deposition stage.
A deposition is sworn testimony. A witness is ordered to show up, is sworn under oath, and the parties are entitled to ask for the witness’s sworn testimony. This testimony is typically compiled in a booklet and/or on video, and that testimony can be used in trial. Today, most depositions are conducted via Zoom or another similar video service.
We typically start the deposition process with the depositions of the parties. And depending on the complexity of your personal injury claim, we may take other depositions as well. These additional depositions could be from other fact witnesses, expert witnesses, police officers, etc.
Once we feel like we have enough information, then we start the next stage of your personal injury claim, the mediation stage.
A mediation is a settlement conference. Once the parties think they have enough basic information to understand the claims, we’ll get together (often ordered by the Court or required by court rules) for a mediation. Here, we will have a mediator, who is a neutral third party, to try and help us resolve the claim.
Many cases are resolved through the mediation process. But even if the case is not resolved, the mediation is often a success by helping us resolve your personal injury claim later down the road.
If you have gone through the entire process, and your personal injury claim doesn’t get settled, then we will have a trial on the case. In most cases, we’ll have a jury trial (where the case is decided by a jury) and not a bench trial (where the case is decided by a judge).
For a trial, both parties will give opening statements. Then, we will call our witnesses to explain what happened and how you were hurt. Then the defense will call their witnesses to rebut our claims. Then, the attorneys do closing arguments before the judge or jury decides the case.
There isn’t a strict format your case will follow. Often, these categories bleed into one another. Maybe we’ll start taking depositions while we’re still fighting about what documents the other side has to produce to us. And usually, we’ll still need more depositions if your personal injury claim doesn’t settle at mediation. But this is the general process for most personal injury claims.
For additional information, here are more detailed articles and videos about each stage of your personal injury claim.