After you've met with your attorney and we've made sure that we have everything that we need, we need to file your lawsuit. The way a lawsuit works is you as the plaintiff are going to sue the defendant. The defendant is the person that caused the car wreck, not the insurance company. As we file a lawsuit, we have to make sure that the lawsuit is filed against the at-fault driver in the correct county. We have to file your lawsuit in the county in which the defendant, the at-fault driver, is currently living.
Once we know in what county the defendant lives, we file a lawsuit and the sheriff's office goes out and serves the at-fault driver with those documents. That works one of three ways:
Number 1: The sheriff is able to serve the defendant pretty quickly.
Number 2: It may take the sheriff a little while, maybe one, two, or even three months to serve the defendant with your lawsuit.
Number 3: If the sheriff isn’t about to serve the defendant, for whatever reason, we will need to hire a private investigator. The investigator will stake out the defendant’s house, they stake out their job… they figure out some way to do it, and ultimately get them served.
Once the at-fault driver has been served, the insurance company hires an attorney to represent them. And if we have filed your case in magistrate court, which is small claims court, we simply wait for a trial in front of the judge. But if your case has been filed in state court, we enter a six to ten month period called “Discovery.” That’s just a fancy legal word for asking a whole bunch of questions and requesting a whole bunch of documents and information about your case and your past.
Towards the end of that discovery period, there will be a deposition. It's an opportunity for the insurance defense attorney to ask you questions under oath. We'll bring you in. We'll prep you. We'll give you homework. We'll make sure that you are fully prepared and ready for that deposition.
The next step is mediation. If your case hasn't settled by that point already, we'll bring in a third party to try to help us resolve your case with a settlement. But not every case settles. A lot of cases do require a trial, whether it's in magistrate court or state court. Either way, whether it's a judge or a jury making the decision, they listen to the case. They decide whether we win, whether we lose, and if we win, how much money we get. Now, there's a lot of little things that happen along the way, but those are the major milestones to expect along the course of litigation.