Vlog: Case Timeline Section #3 - Litigation

Transcription:

Hi guys, Matt Clendenin here. Hope everyone's doing well. We are now in the third section of our new pamphlet, personal injury case timeline, happy to send anybody a copy if they want. This explains to our clients what goes on in a personal injury case. It's such a long process that can be very daunting and stressful. So this timeline gives people the confidence to know, here's where we are. Here's what's happening. This week's video, we're going to be in litigation. I've explained in the other videos, that litigation simply means you have a formal lawsuit in court. And I always like to tell people, please keep in mind what the whole point of litigation is. The whole point of litigation is to exercise your seventh amendment constitutional right to a trial by jury. That's something very important about our country because other than government regulation, it's civil trials in the jury, which is the conscience of the community.

The community members come out and it's civil trials that hold people accountable. So other than governmental laws, it's really civil jury trials that keep our communities safe and hold people accountable. That fundamental idea of fairness is partly what our country has been built on. So litigation is geared towards a trial. Everything we do is gearing up to trial, but let me briefly break down kind of the different stages of what goes on during a lawsuit. As we prepare to go all the way to trial. The first thing is discovery. Discovery means that we just trade information. The plaintiff can ask the defendant for documents, the documents get reviewed. You figure out what's going on in the case, you take depositions. That's like a formal interview where the lawyer gets to ask questions under oath. Sometimes there'll be a site inspection where you go and inspect the area.

If there's a vehicle or a crash, experts and engineers can inspect the vehicle. Discovery is the process where you figure out the facts of what happened in the case. Discovery is ongoing. It happens throughout the whole lawsuit right up until the very end. But a lot of it happens in the beginning when people are trying to figure out the basics of what's going on. After six months or so, the court is going to call everyone back in for what's called a case management conference, some people call it a status conference, and that's just where the judge goes, "Hey guys, what's going on with this case? You know, I want to know a little bit of what's going on. Are we progressing? You know, can I schedule a trial?". If everything's moving along, the judge will give you a trial date. Usually that's another six months to a year after your case management, once you start to get closer to that trial date, parties will try to have a mediation.

That's where you go to a private negotiator, usually it's a retired judge or a retired lawyer, and they'll help each side negotiate because at this point, all the discovery is pretty much done. So folks know the facts of the case. That allows you to balance the risk and reward of going to trial. If mediation doesn't work, you're heading to trial. The last thing you do before trial is expert discovery.This is not the facts of the case, but this is each side's experts that are going to talk to the jury about the issues in the case. So lots of times you'll have a doctor come in to talk about what are the injuries and what's the person's life going to be like for the rest of their life. Other times it's an issue of whose fault it is. 

So if a defendant says, "we didn't do anything wrong." And then you bring in an engineer who talks about how they violated all these engineering standards and how it was a dangerous place. Experts can make or break a case, but of course, as you can imagine, it can cost anywhere $10 - $20,000 to prepare your own experts for trial. And to take the deposition of the insurance companies, experts, and after expert discovery, all the chips are on the table. Now we're headed to trial. You can finally have a trial and the jury tells you who's right, who's wrong. Who's at fault and how much money the victim should get. And so that's the process of litigation. It's all about trial. It's your seventh amendment, right to a trial by a jury in civil cases. And that's the third section of the case timeline. Usually it can take a year to two years to get to trial. It could be longer these days with COVID-19 but, that's the process. So thank you guys. Next week, we're going to jump into the fourth section, which is case closure and what happens after a case is finished. Take care.