How Pre-Litigation Can Be Vital to Winning Your Personal Injury Case

When you tune in to watch a gripping courtroom drama on TV, you’re seeing only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the legal processes that led up to that point. Like that proverbial iceberg, of which nearly 90 percent remains hidden deep underwater, there’s an immense background to any personal injury case, a complicated undertaking that comprises multiple steps which must take place before plaintiffs and defendants ever stand before a judge and jury. During that process, there are also numerous opportunities for either side to agree to a settlement, meaning that only a fraction of personal injury cases actually end up being decided in a courtroom. Let’s take a few minutes to describe the many stages of the pre-litigation process, plus how they could impact your personal injury settlement and ultimately help determine any compensation you might receive.

The Stages of Pre-Litigation

As we’ve already noted, along the way it’s entirely possible that one side or the other will decide to accept a settlement offer, which indeed happens more often than not. But many cases do proceed along the entire timeline and end up with a jury determining the final outcome. Here’s what can happen throughout this often-lengthy seven-phase process, and why it’s essential to have the assistance of a knowledgeable personal injury attorney to guide and advise you along the way.

• The injury. You might be involved in a car crash, experience a dangerous incident at work, or find yourself in some other hazardous circumstance that could truly be terrifying or traumatic, but if you aren’t diagnosed as having been physically injured in some medically obvious way there will be no grounds for us to initiate a personal injury case. If you’re unhurt, no legitimate personal injury attorney will consider taking you on as a client.
• The all-important phone calls. If you have been physically harmed through no fault of your own, the very first step to take (after dialing 911 to seek help from the police and to ask for assistance from other first responders) is to call an attorney at 855-MIKE-WINS (855-645-3946) to get us started working on your case. Don’t wait any longer than necessary to begin that part of the process, since witnesses can vanish, evidence can disappear, and medical symptoms can worsen over the days, weeks and months following an injury. There’s also a three-year statute of limitations, after which your case will be summarily dismissed from court if you miss the filing deadline.
• The client onboarding process. Once you become a valued, bona fide client of Mike Morse Law Firm, all our subsequent interactions and conversations are protected by attorney-client privilege. That means anything you discuss with us is entirely confidential and can only be used to help us build and support your case.
• Gathering evidence.This includes assembling a list or eyewitnesses, obtaining a police report, locating any video recordings of the incident, professionally assessing the accident scene, identifying expert witnesses to review the circumstances surrounding the injury and to help assess fault, and collecting medical records or other documentation to make a cogent and persuasive case which can be proved in the subsequent steps of this process.
• Conducting discovery. Through this step we initiate a variety of legal processes intended to garner more vital information that we’ll use to build a convincing argument to help win your case. We will submit interrogatories – sets of questions posed to defendants and their insurance companies to gain essential details. We will conduct depositions – meetings where plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses are questioned under oath about the circumstances that led to your injuries. We’ll gather affidavits and assemble admissions that confirm key facts and verify conditions surrounding the root cause of your pain and suffering.
• Pre-trial negotiations. Once we’ve put together all the necessary details to support your case, we’ll prepare a demand letter that explains our findings and sets forth the compensation we’re seeking for our client. That will likely be followed by meetings with the defendants, their attorneys, and representatives of their insurance companies to see if we can mutually arrive at a settlement that will offer our client the greatest possible compensation in the fastest possible time frame.
• The mediation or arbitration process. If we can’t come to a mutually agreeable solution through pre-trial negotiations, it’s possible we might seek a mediator or arbitrator to help people on both sides of the case find common ground and reach a settlement before going to the expense and taking the time to go to trial. We often find that an unbiased third party can bring parties together and shortcut months – or even years – of legal procedures. It’s important to note that while they are confidential, the results of mediation are not binding on either side; arbitration, on the other hand, is a binding process through which the arbitrator makes a final determination on the case that both sides must agree to accept beforehand. We’ll advise you which route we believe is best for your circumstances, to help you make the smartest possible decision on how to proceed.

If All Else Fails, It’s Time for Litigation

If mediation or other pre-trial negotiations fail to produce an agreeable settlement, or both sides don’t agree to accept binding arbitration, we won’t hesitate to go to trial. Remember that under our client-friendly contingency fee arrangement, everything we’ve described above – including the actual courtroom trial if it becomes necessary – happens without you ever having to spend one red cent from your hard-earned savings. But you should also know that after you’ve been hurt, nothing can take place at all unless you make that initial phone call to ask for our legal representation. So, we’ll say it once more, you need to call 855-MIKE-WINS or contact us online right here. Until you take the first step along the path to a solution, you’ll just be spinning your wheels.

Content checked by Mike Morse, personal injury attorney with Mike Morse Injury Law Firm. Mike Morse is the founder of Mike Morse Law Firm, the largest personal injury law firm in Michigan. Since being founded in 1995, Mike Morse Law Firm has grown to over 200 employees, served 40,000 clients, and collected more than $1.5 billion for victims of auto, truck and motorcycle accidents. The main office is in Southfield, MI but you can also find us in Detroit, Sterling Heights and many other locations.