What Types Of Personal Injury Cases Does Your Firm Typically Handle?

We handle all kinds of personal injury cases including auto accidents, construction accidents, slip and falls, and dog bites. Any time someone gets hurt as a result of another person’s negligence, we can help.

What Are The Steps To File A Personal Injury Claim In The PI Recovery Process?

Step one is to focus on your injury. You need to seek medical attention and you need to make sure you are talking to your healthcare provider about all of your problems each time you see them. It’s important to complain about the problems you are having because that’s how they get documented. The best way to maximize the value of your claim is to seek treatment first and then seek a settlement.

When the treatment is complete and you know what problems you are going to have in the future, then we will gather your records together and make a claim packet. It will include all of your medical records and it will explain how it’s affected your life. We’ll send that packet off to the insurance company or the entity that did the damage, depending on what kind of entity it is. They’ll typically take 30-60 days to review it and get back to us. Sometimes, they will be reasonable about it and negotiate a settlement right then. Other times, they won’t, and we’ll file a lawsuit.

After the filing, we have to serve the defendants, giving them formal notice of the lawsuit. Then, they have 30 days to file an answer, which sometimes gets extended. We’ll show up to court for our first case management conference, where the court will ask us if we want to engage in some sort of alternate dispute resolution. Then, the other side will send us written questions that we need to respond to. They may take the plaintiff’s deposition. Depending on the severity of the injury, they may have an independent medical examination of the plaintiff and we’ll have one of our representatives there to protect them during the course of that examination.

They may conduct, depending on the type of claim, a psychological evaluation. After they’ve got all the information they need, we will either be able to resolve the claim through discussion between the attorneys or we’ll go to a mediation and spend a day going back and forth with the other side, trying to come up with an appropriate amount to resolve the claim. If everyone agrees, the claim gets resolved. If they don’t, we begin preparing for trial. We will hire the necessary experts, depending on the type of case, to evaluate the claimants’ injuries and prepare them to testify. We’ll talk to the people in the plaintiff’s community who know them and know how they were doing before and after the accident.

We present the story not just from the plaintiff, but from the other people around them. We’ll depose the other side’s experts, find out what they are going to testify, and find the holes in what they have to say. Over 99% of the time, by the time the case gets to within a week of trial, it’s been resolved. If it doesn’t, we put on a show in front of a jury and we find out what they have to say. That may take anywhere from a year to a year and a half from the time of filing. In some jurisdictions, it can take up to three years.

For more information on Personal Injury Claims In California, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (408) 687-9155 today.