The goal of any car accident lawyer should be to resolve the case for the full value. The goal of the insurance company is just the opposite, the settle for as little as possible. This is the dynamic of any car accident claim in Atlanta, Decatur, Griffin, Macon, where ever.
If you, your attorney, and their insurance company can successfully settle the case, this is always best. However, this is not always the case. In some cases, neither party can agree on the value of the case, and therefore, cannot settle until they do.
It is in these times, a car accident lawsuit is a possibility. Having to spend money for outside counsel to represent the insurance company is not a great deterrent for them. The insurance company considers it a cost of doing business even is it is unprofitable for them on an individual claim basis.
As with any litigation, a complaint will be filed in the proper venue. Once the complaint is filed, discovery will begin. Each side will send the other questions to answer, called interrogatories, things and papers to give to each side, called notices to produce, and sometimes requests to admit or deny a fact, called request to admit.
After this paperwork, we will consider scheduling depositions which are questions under oath. After the depositions, we would likely give an attempt at mediation to see if we can resolve or settle the collision case.
If we cannot after mediation, a trial would be the next step.
Trials are what most people are familiar with because of the television or movies you have seen. Although what you saw was very dramatic, by and large, some of that is true. However, in a car accident case you don’t expect so see someone “break” and confess to something. And you are not going to see anything that was not already talked about to death. No one likes surprises and in court is very rare that a surprise can even exist. Why? If you asked the right questions in the discovery period, we should already know everything. Plus, if they didn’t tell us to begin with, we can likely keep it out of court, anyway. Just remember, there is only one surprise available in a trial. That surprise is what the jury will return as their verdict.
This is a summary of the basic steps in car accident or car wreck litigation cases.
We represent clients as their Decatur car accident attorney, Atlanta auto accident legal help, McDonough auto accident law firm, Griffin car accident lawyer, and all over the state of Georgia for motor vehicle accident litigation and auto accident settlements.
By: Georgia Attorney, Joseph P. McClelland