A motorcycle accident lawsuit may take even longer than an insurance claim. You need to go through the court system and potentially the entire trial process. Here, you are not only at the mercy of the insurance company, but the timing is also governed by the court’s process and any backlog in its docket.
There are numerous steps to the motorcycle accident lawsuit process.
You control the timing of when the lawsuit begins. You give your attorney the green light to draft the complaint and file it with the court and other parties. The only constraint on when you open your case is that you must file it in court and serve it on the other party before the statute of limitations expires.
In many jurisdictions, the defendant gets 30 days to respond to your complaint by filing an answer with the court, although they may seek an extension of this deadline.
The defendant can add further time to the process by filing motions with the court, seeking to have your case dismissed on various grounds that the judge must rule on before the case proceeds.
The discovery process adds a great deal of time to your case because both you and the defendant get to request information from each other. Your attorney can conduct depositions, where they get to question the defendant’s witnesses (including the driver involved in the crash) under oath. You can expect to have your own deposition taken, where you will also have to answer questions.
A trial only happens after the rest of the entire legal process. You may be surprised to learn that a trial may only last for a one or two days as the capstone of a legal process that may have already taken a year or more by that point.