The Legal Process

In the course of any personal injury case, there are various stages. There's the investigative phase where all the facts are gathered. There's the documentation phase where we are gathering all the information we put it together in a presentation to the insurance company so that we can hopefully resolve the case through negotiations. Most of our cases resolve in the negotiation phase. However, when there's a dispute concerning liability, who's to blame for the accident, or whether there's just simply a disagreement between our law firm and the insurance company on the value that would fairly resolve that case, then a lawsuit is required. And in those cases, the lawsuit goes through various stages.

One of them is the discovery phase, which is an exchange of information between the law firm that represents the injured victim and the defense firm who represents the interests of the insurance company. And there's an exchange of information, both in written form, in the form of requests for production of documents back and forth, and interrogatories, which are written questions that must be answered by the injured person and the defendant, the responsible party, under oath, determining certain facts of the case. Beyond the documents that are exchanged and the written answers to questions are depositions, which are a sworn testimony under oath taken in the presence of a court reporter in order to determine not only the facts of the case, how the accident happened from the standpoint of the police officers and witnesses and parties involved, but also the injured victim is called upon to testify concerning how the accident affected them from the standpoint of their injuries, the pain and suffering, their lost earnings, and so forth.

And also, medical doctors and other providers of health care are called upon to give sworn testimony in depositions in order to explain exactly what happened as far as the injury is concerned and what it took to get the injured victim better, back on his or her feet again. So in the process of discovery, our clients can expect to hear from our office frequently concerning information that we need from them in the form of documentation, in the form of cooperation in answering these sworn questions under oath, and also in the deposition setting, which is verbal exchange of information in the presence of a court reporter.

There may be an arbitration proceeding in order to resolve the case, there may be a mediation proceeding, which is facilitated negotiations in the presence of a neutral who's called upon to help bring the parties together, and then if none of those resolve the case, then there's the jury trial, which is the presentation of the case in an adversarial format with lawyers for both sides in the presence of a judge and a jury in order to determine the facts of the accident, in order to assess liability, and to determine a fair amount of compensation for the person who's been injured.