Lawsuit Timeline
If I do get involved in a lawsuit, how long will it take from start to finish?
Answer:
The quickest I have ever gotten a case to trial from the time a lawsuit
was originally filed was 4 months, the quickest timeframe in my 21 years
of experience. Most cases, from start to finish, take much longer than
that. This is so, not just based upon how much time it takes for your
lawyer to do all of the things necessary to prepare the case for trial,
but also on who the judge is and how large of a trial docket they carry
from month to month. Most of the judges in Florida state courts have a
trial calendar that is one to four weeks long and will add many cases to
the trial docket. At the calendar call, the judge figures out which case
will go first and in what order the other cases will go. If it is a two
week trial docket and the first two cases take one week each from
beginning of jury selection to the jury verdict at the end of the case,
the judge will only reach two cases on the docket. If another 40 cases
remain on the list and have not been reached, they will all be rolled
over to the judge’s next trial docket. Some cases can get rolled over
from docket to docket, resulting in months going by while waiting for
trial. This aspect of civil trial procedure is outside your lawyer’s
control.
What is within your lawyer’s control is the amount of time it takes to
get answers to written questions (called interrogatories), and any
documents, photographs, witness statements, etc., called requests for
production, from the opposing side and to take the depositions of the
defendant and any other witnesses in the case as soon as possible.
My law firm actively proceeds forward on all cases that a law suit has
been filed on, by promptly hiring the appropriate experts, taking the
necessary depositions and doing everything necessary to prepare your
case for trial. This will speed up the process as much as possible. I
would say my average time from filing suit to trial, over the past 21
years, is no less than one year in Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Monroe,
Pasco, Hillsborough and Orange counties and a little quicker in some of
the smaller counties in Florida.
More General Questions:
If I do get involved in a lawsuit, how long will it take from start to finish?
How much am I likely to recover if I do go to trial on my case?
How do you recover damages from someone that does not have insurance?
How do I pick a personal injury lawyer?
What happens if I had an old injury to the same area of my body that gets injured in a new accident?
How quickly do I have to hire a lawyer? How quickly do I have to file a lawsuit?
What do I do if I need a personal injury lawyer but am unable to get to your office?
