People ask me exactly what is involved in a lawsuit.  The first thing that's involved in a lawsuit is what's called a complaint.  A complaint is the actual lawsuit itself.  It’s a document that I file with the court that is given to the defendant or the defendants in your case and actually says what happened in your case, not only factually what happened in your case but also how the defendant was wrong, they ran the red light, they were negligent, they committed medical malpractice and then how that you were injured as a result. 

The next part of a lawsuit is typically what are call discovery requests.  Discovery requests are a series of questions that are sent to you, as a plaintiff, and also requests for documents and potentially requests to admit certain things.  A lot of times, we already have the documents that the defendant or the defendants are asking for, so we will provide these to defense counsel.  The questions are frequently about what factually happened in your case, do you have lost wages or injections as a result of what happened in your case and describe those things in detail.  

When you first see a set of discovery requests, they look to be very burdensome.  But in actuality, they’re not that complicated in answering.  We will assist you through this process of answering the discovery requests and provide the information that you need.

What usually happens in a lawsuit after discovery requests are done is a series of depositions will be taken.  I will take the deposition or depositions of the defendants or defendant and then your deposition will be taken by the defense attorney.

After the depositions are done, then the case will go to mediation.  In another video, I talk about what a mediation is and how that this an attempt to settle the case.  

The mediation is a gathering among myself, yourself, other family members who may be involved in the lawsuit and the defendant or the defendants and their insurance company and their defense counsel.  The mediation is run by an attorney who is experienced in these particular types of cases, and the goal of him or her is to try settle the case.  The goal is to try and come to a dollar figure that the two of us agree upon is an appropriate figure to settle the case.  

The case can only be settled with a dollar amount.  It can't be settled with a specific request for a change in behavior by the defendant or the defendants, because that's just simply not allowed.

The mediation is informal in the sense that I and yourself, or yourself and your family, are in a conference room.  The defendant’s counsel and the defendant’s insurance company and possibly the defendant are in another conference room and the attorney goes back and forth talking to the two of us with offers and counteroffers to try and settle the case.  

It’s possible that a mediation may go an entire day.  It’s possible that a mediation may settle the case in the course of the hour or two.  It depends on the complexity of the case, it depends on our position with regard to how much we believe that the case should settle for and also the position of the insurance company or the defense counsel and what they think that a case should settle for.

Generally speaking, most cases settle at a mediation.  There may be more than one mediation during the course of litigation of the case, but only about five percent of cases go to trial.  The rest of them either settle in mediation or settle at some time before trial is set.

The mediation is usually very productive, because the mediator tells us about the strengths and weaknesses of our case, which we may or may not already know.  The defendant or the insurance company is aware of the strengths and weaknesses of their case, and, again, we try and come to a figure that is agreeable for all of us that can be paid by the defendant or the defense insurance company for your case.