You hear about trial verdicts in the news, but hardly anything about what happens before an accident case can go to trial. In this video, a South Carolina accident injury lawyer describes the basic, most important steps in the lawsuit process leading to trial.
Transcript
This is how a South Carolina personal injury lawsuit works. The lawsuit process is called litigation here's what generally happens. First we file the lawsuit called a complaint it lists in basic terms the reasons why or suing the wrongdoer who hurt you. You’re called the plaintiff and the wrongdoer is the defendant. The lawsuit asks for money compensation called damages, the lawsuit gets served or sent to, in an official way, the defendant. After that the defendant files a response called an answer it lists a lot of excuses for why the defendants not responsible for hurting you. Many times these are just smoke screens.
Next discovery begins that's the process where the parties exchange the evidence they have about the case it generally has two basic parts. The first is written discovery which is questions and answers on paper. The second part is depositions that's testimony taken out of court but still under oath. After depositions the parties often go to mediation, that's another process where the parties hire an experienced lawyer who's not involved with the case to help them get it settled. If they can't get it settled serious trial preparation begins. One of the last and most important parts of trial preparation in your case is your doctor’s deposition. Doctors have more important things to do like saving lives than testifying in court so we take their deposition on a video for trial. These are usually very expensive because doctors charges for their time as they should because we're taking them away from their other patients. We also have to hire an experienced court reporter and a certified videographer to make sure the deposition gets done right as required by law. Finally, your trial gets scheduled about 14 to 24 months from when we file the lawsuit.
If you've got questions about some specific things that we discussed in this video you can check out other articles on our website.
If you're wondering if your case is going to go to trial and you don't already have a lawyer it's time for you to talk with one. Feel free to email us or start a live chat right where you are you can just pick up the phone and call us we'll answer your questions for free and we'll see what we can do to help you. I thank you for thinking about this with me and I hope I see you soon.
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