What does a Personal Injury Case Involve?

A personal injury case in Maryland involves a lengthy process, but this is why you have a personal injury lawyer to help you through it. In short, you will meet with your lawyer, begin the lawsuit, enter a discovery phase, there will be pre-trial resolutions, and then a possible settlement. If the settlement is not acceptable, the personal injury case will go to trial where there can be payment if you win the trial.

What to Expect During a Personal Injury Case

Personal injury cases generally take a long time to resolve. This is because they are so complex and because there is such an involved discovery period by which the legal teams provide information to one another. There are also many steps during the process by which the legal teams may try to resolve issues prior to going to trial.

Personal Injury Case Timeline

• Meet with your Attorney. When you first meet with your attorney after an accident, you will go over what happened, they will collect all of the important information from you. Depending on how complicated the case is, this can be a short or long meeting. You should come prepared to recount all the events leading up to your accident.
• Begin the Lawsuit. Your attorney will explain and help with the paperwork required to file your case. The first document is usually a complaint or petition which outlines your case against the defendant. Following the initial filing, there are more rounds of paperwork that need to be addressed by you and your lawyer, such as: summons, answers, claims and counterclaims, reply, and so on.
• Discovery Phase. The discovery process encompasses not only you and your lawyer, but any persons involved with your accident, witnesses, and researching documents. Everything should come out in this phase and there should be no secret as to what happened. This process is usually the most lengthy and difficult.
• Pre-trial Resolutions. These “motions” resolve questions about your lawsuit and can sometimes resolve and terminate the litigation completely. There are many different types of motions, but they most often occur before the trial begins and are powerful enough to resolve it.
• Settlement. Most personal injury claims are typically resolved outside of court and often end in an agreed settlement. With the settlement comes an agreement to not pursue the court case any further.
• Trial. Once a personal injury case makes it to trial, the judge or the jury will examine all of the evidence, each party will have a chance to dispute, and it will be determined if the defendant should be held responsible for the injuries sustained during an accident.
• Payment. If your case wins, you may collect monetary damages. This phase of the timeline can also be very lengthy because many people cannot afford to pay for all of the damages at once. If a lump sum isn’t all paid, then, even more, paperwork may be involved and other legal processes such as garnishments may occur.

For more information, take a look at our personal injury lawyer videos.

Schedule a free consultation to review your personal injury case

Albers & Associates has years of experience resolving complex Maryland personal injury cases. We represent those who have been injured by someone else’s negligence and whose personal injuries have caused them physical pain, stress, medical bills, and other damages. We care about the future of our clients and work hard to see that each of them receives the most positive outcome in their personal injury case.

Our fee is contingent on there being a recovery in your case.

Call (443) 665-8030 to schedule a free home consultation. Weekend appointments are available and if you are injured and cannot travel, we will come to you.