You may know someone who had to file a personal injury lawsuit. These things happen fairly often. However, you won’t know the process from the inside unless you must file one yourself.
If you file a lawsuit, you must think about factors like why the severity of injuries matters in personal injury cases. To understand such things, you’ll need to hire a lawyer. Even if you think you understand the laws surrounding these cases, they often have subtleties that only attorneys truly comprehend.
You should know a few things before you decide to file a personal injury lawsuit. We will talk about five of them right now.
Most Personal Injury Lawsuits Don’t Ever Go to Trial
Let’s start by talking about a factor of personal injury lawsuits that many plaintiffs don’t realize before they hire a lawyer. If you sue a person or business because you believe they harmed you, then it’s statistically unlikely that you will ever have to appear in court for a trial.
It might sound strange, but very few cases make it to that point. That’s because in the overwhelming majority of lawsuits, the defendant decides to settle.
They might settle regardless of whether they think they actually did something wrong or not. Often, during the discovery phase, their lawyer will look at the collected evidence and advise their client that they shouldn’t leave the outcome up to a jury’s decision.
Usually, a settlement happens purely for financial reasons. If the defendant and their lawyer offer the plaintiff enough money so they will consider the matter closed, that’s probably preferable to going through the whole trial process and having a jury decide the outcome. If the jury feels that the defendant did something wrong, they may award the plaintiff ten times the amount that would change hands in a settlement.
If You Go After a Large Corporation, You’re Probably in for a Fight
If you sue a private citizen, and they don’t have a lot of money or resources, then it’s highly likely they’ll try to settle. If you sue someone who’s stubborn and also has a lot of money, then they may try to avoid settling and instruct their lawyer to take the case to trial. That doesn’t happen often, but it’s always possible.
If you go after a large corporation because you allege that they harmed you, that’s another matter. Maybe you’re going after a company via a product liability lawsuit. You bought a product this company produces, and you feel that it made you ill or injured you.
A large company might settle, but they may also decide to fight you and your lawyer in court, especially if they see the evidence that you collected during discovery and they don’t feel there’s much there. Large corporations sometimes try to bully individuals who the corporation feels do not have their vast wealth and resources.
You Never Know How Long These Lawsuits Will Take
If you think you might file a personal injury lawsuit, then presumably, you will go talk to a lawyer that knows this area of the law. You can tell them what happened, and they will decide whether they want to represent you.
You can ask them if they agree to represent you how long they think the process might take from start to finish. They may give you a ballpark estimate based on their personal experience with cases like yours.
You should keep in mind, though, that no lawyer can ever predict exactly how long such a process will take. The time from when your lawyer first informs the defendant that you’re suing them to when you see any money might take months. It may take even longer if the defendant’s lawyer tries to stall for time.
Sometimes, a defendant’s lawyer will drag their feet because they’re trying to frustrate you. They might feel that if they can stall for long enough, that you will accept even a very small settlement amount just to end the proceedings.
If you go into a situation where you sue a company or private citizen, know that the lawsuit might take up an untold number of hours. This might consume your life for several months moving forward.
You Can File a Lawsuit and Pay a Lawyer Via Contingency
You should also know that if you decide you will sue someone, you can almost always hire a lawyer and set up a contingency payment plan. This kind of payment plan generally makes the most sense if you feel a person or company harmed you, and you want to sue them.
If you pay your lawyer via contingency, that means if they don’t force a settlement or get a jury’s verdict in your favor, then you pay them nothing. This makes suing someone a lot easier, especially if you have very little money when you begin the process.
These Lawsuits Can End Friendships and Relationships
You should know one final thing about personal injury lawsuits. They can end friendships or relationships with family members.
If you sue someone like a friend, family member, or neighbor, that will naturally produce hard feelings. Maybe you don’t want to do it, but you feel you have no choice. You may feel this way if you think that this person’s action or inaction harmed you, and they won’t willingly make restitution without you getting the law involved.
It makes sense that it might infuriate someone close to you if you sue them. If you’re going to do it, you need to think about the consequences carefully. Think about what this person did. Then, consider your relationship and what it means to you.
If you conclude that you can’t let what happened slide, then you may have no choice but to move forward with hiring a lawyer and putting the lawsuit in motion. Know that you are probably signaling an end to that friendship or relationship when you do it, though.
