Can I afford to get involved in a lawsuit?
Answer:
If you are injured and are going to suffer long term problems that will
affect your ability to earn income, affect your ability to perform your
normal activities of daily life or affect your ability to enjoy life in
the future, you can’t afford not to get an attorney involved in a
lawsuit. If you are lucky, and you get assigned a reasonable insurance
adjuster, who works for a reasonable insurance company, you may be able
to settle your case without ever having to file a lawsuit. However, my
experience in handling cases involving serious personal injuries is that
an insurance company will rarely offer fair value for the case right
away. Once a law suit is filed, the insurance company can conduct a much
more thorough investigation and may then be prepared to pay the amount
you think your case is worth.
Just because a lawsuit is filed, does not mean a case has to go to
trial. Some insurance companies have a policy that if they are going to
settle a case above a certain amount, they want to take your deposition,
order old medical records, take depositions of former employers,
spouses, co-workers or anyone else they can find to determine if your
injuries are real and related to the accident at issue, or may possibly
stem from a prior injury or accident. In some cases, filing a lawsuit is
necessary to get the defendant’s insurance company to make their top
offer.
However, there is a risk to filing a lawsuit: if the case does not
settle and actually goes to trial, and you lose, you could end up owing
the other side’s lawyer’s fees or costs. You need an experienced
attorney to guide you through the process of evaluating the strengths
and weaknesses of your case and to help you decide whether it is worth
the risk of filing a lawsuit and going to trial or not. If a lawsuit
becomes necessary, my law firm will advance all of the costs of
litigation, including the cost of filing the case with the clerk, the
cost of depositions, expert witness fees, etc. It is important that you
hire a law firm that can afford to – and is willing to – spend the money
necessary to properly prepare your case for trial. My law firm is
financially sound and has been dealing with the same bank for over
twenty years. I have an established line of credit into the hundreds of
thousands of dollars that is available and is used for advancing costs
on my litigation files, so that, in the event that their case does not
settle and goes to a jury trial, my clients will have the best experts
and the most visual and cutting edge trial aids available. If you hire
my law firm, I am the lawyer that will be at your side throughout the
trial process – from the initial decision whether to file suit through
the return of a verdict by a jury.
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?
What is the Statute of Limitations in Florida?
Can I afford to get involved in a lawsuit?
