Filing a lawsuit simply means that papers are filed with the court.  Those papers are a Summons and Complaint and the filing of these documents is what begins a lawsuit.  The next step in the process is to take copies of those filed documents and to have them served on the defendant (the one being sued).  There are rules in the South Carolina Rules of Civil Procedure that tells us lawyers how to properly serve people.  It may sound fairly simple but believe me, otherwise good cases can get sidetracked if the defendant isn’t served properly. 

Once the defendant is served with the Summons and Complaint, they have 30 days in which to Answer.  In general, say for instance in a wreck case, the person who was at fault in the accident will get served with the Summons and Complaint.  They don’t know what the heck to do with those documents so they give them to their automobile insurance company.  The insurance company then forwards the documents to an attorney or law firm of their choice in the same county where the wreck occurred.  That attorney then files and serves an Answer to the Complaint within the 30 days of service. 

After the defense attorney answers the Complaint, the lawsuit enters into a phase called discovery.  Discovery is just as its name suggests, a time period for each side to discover facts about the incident giving rise to the case and about the other side.  Discovery takes 2 primary forms:  paper and depositions.  Paper discovery includes documents such as interrogatories and requests for production.  These are documents that both sides send to each other.  In these documents, the sides ask each other questions about the litigant’s background, history as well as the incident which prompted the lawsuit in the first place.  This stage of discover can also include subpoenas to third-parties requesting documents and other materials. 

Depositions typically occur after most of the paper discovery has been completed.  A deposition is  transcribed testimony, under oath, in which you answer the opposing attorney’s questions.  Depositions take place at one of the lawyer’s offices and can last anywhere from 1  hour to days.  In the average wreck case, I estimate that the norm that I have seen is about 2 hours for the plaintiff.  In a deposition, your lawyer is sitting beside you at a conference table, there is a court reporter on the other side taking down your testimony and the opposing lawyer is sitting in front of you asking questions.  While depositions can seem intimidating, they are usually not nearly as bad as people think they will be. 

Finally, in many of the counties in South Carolina including Greenville, we have what is known as mandatory mediation.  The means that certain lawsuits filed in the applicable counties must mediate the case before it goes to trial.  Mediation must occur within 300 days of the filing date on the Complaint.  It is my belief and experience that mediation is a good thing.  It is an opportunity for both sides to meet at a third-party lawyer’s office to try to negotiate a settlement.  The third-party lawyer is a neutral and is on no one’ side.  The only job this person has is to attempt to facilitate a settlement.  Mediations can last hours to days, although it is rare for them to last more than a day unless the case is extremely complex.  Mandatory mediation has been very successful in the counties where it has been implemented and has helped to clear backed up court rosters. 

If the case cannot be resolved and settled at mediation, the next step is the march to trial.  Trial in a civil suit is a topic all by itself.  As such, it will be addressed in a separate article!  Hope this was helpful.

I get many different responses when I tell people that I’m a personal injury lawyer.  Some people think it’s pretty cool.  Some people tell me about the personal injury cases that they have had before and the lawyer or lawyers that represented them.  Most of the stories aren’t exactly stellar when it comes to their opinion of the lawyer they had.  The reason for their dissatisfaction seems to revolves around a lack of communication and getting less from their case than they expected.   Then there are the folks who, when I tell them I am a car wreck lawyer, look at me as if I have some sort of disease.  These are the types of folks who say they would never hire a lawyer after a wreck.  They seem to think there is something inherently wrong with hiring an accident attorney period.  Don’t get me wrong, even though I am a personal injury lawyer and it would be easy for me to take this kind of attitude personally, I don’t.  These folks are usually good, hard working people.

 Ironically, I believe that lawyers themselves are somewhat responsible for the negative perception that these folks have with all the silly, nonsensical advertising that has been done in the past several years.  I won’t name names but I’m sure you can think of a few gems yourself.  I also think that some of their hesitancy is because they simply don’t know what to expect from an injury lawyer.  They’ve never hired one, all they have seen are goofy commercials, and they frankly would rather just take their chances with the insurance company. 

This article is primarily for these folks and for anyone who wonders what to expect when they hire a car accident lawyer.  I’d like to do what I can, to the extent possible,  to shed some light on these questions.  First, let me be clear about something.  Neither I nor any South Carolina automobile accident lawyer can ethically guarantee or tell you with certainty what sort of result you will get, what size settlement or verdict, etc., in any kind of case.  And I will do no such thing in this article.  What I will do though, is tell you, in general, what I have seen in about a decade of practicing in this area of law. 

In the beginning (by the way, there is a life-changing book that begins this way also  (:  ), you are in an accident and are injured.  Let’s say you are taken to the hospital, whether Greenville Memorial or St. Francis or another, and given some x-rays which are inconclusive and then released.  You wait a few days and you are still a little sore.  In the meantime, your car or truck is damaged, possibly totaled, and the insurance company for the person who hit you has been calling you trying to get a recorded statement and come out to look at your vehicle.  Perhaps it is a little later in the game and you have already gotten in that EMS and hospital bill.  From my experience, even for just a simple ride to the hospital and an x-ray at the hospital you are looking at about $500.00 for the EMS ride and just at or above $1,000.00 for the hospital.  You may have insurance that helps with these bills or you may not. 

The first thing you may find is that, in dealing with the insurance company for the at-fault driver, they are not wanting to pay you what you think your car is worth.  You would like retail value but they don’t even appear to be giving you private party value.  Then, they aren’t even willing to pay for all of your hospital bills.  You don’t understand this because the investigating police officer put the other guy at fault.  Why won’t they just pay for the damages that their driver caused?   

It surprises me that insurance companies don’t just pay people for the damages and medical bills caused by their at-fault drivers.  Personally, I believe that many people who don’t really want to have to hire a lawyer are forced to do so simply because the insurance company refuses to be reasonable.  Like they say though, it is what it is.  There you sit with a totaled car and medical bills that you can’t afford.  And you begin to think about hiring a car wreck attorney. 

Well, here is what you can expect, in general.  Car wreck lawyers are, in my opinion, easily divided into 2 categories.  There are the big firms.  These are the ones you see all over the phone book, on billboards, TV and radio.  I am sure that 2-3 lawyer’s names have probably already popped into your head after reading this sentence.  Those firms, by definition, deal in volume.  That means they pay for massive advertising to get a massive number of clients.  With a massive number of clients, comes what I believe is the negative aspect of these firms – a lack of great, value-oriented client service.  It’s all in the numbers.  With that many clients, they simply can’t give you that much time.  And I firmly believe they can’t give your case that much time either.  There are simply too many cases fighting for attention.  The second group of law firms are the smaller firms.  My firm would fall squarely into this category.  These firms don’t spend tens of thousands of dollars per month on advertising.  Instead, they rely on word of mouth referrals by both former clients and other lawyers.  Because of this, attorneys in these kind of firms are very concerned about client service, about making sure the client is satisfied.  This makes perfect sense as the lawyer is relying on the current client to recommend them to other people after their case is done.  These firms know that the current client will only recommend them if they are satisfied with the services provided. 

Regardless of which kind of firm that you choose, the general process is usually similar:

I.             The Contract

For a wreck case, attorneys will typically work for you under a contingency fee agreement.  That is an agreement where the attorney’s fee is contingent upon a settlement or verdict being reached.  In other words, if the attorney is not able to settle the case or get a verdict in your favor, there is no fee.  Costs, however, are different.  Costs are things that an attorney has to pay out of his own pocket for your case.  Some examples of costs are medical records, deposition transcripts, copying costs, etc.  These costs will still be billed to you regardless of whether your case is settled.  Generally speaking, the costs in a simple wreck case prior to litigation are usually not very much at all. 

II.            What happens after the contract is signed

After you sign the contingency fee agreement, the attorney-client relationship is in full force.  The attorney will then begin his investigation.  This includes things such as ordering the traffic collision report from the South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles, interviewing witnesses to the collision, taking picture of the scene of the wreck as well as the vehicles involved, if still available, and ordering your medical records.  You job during this time is simple.  Take care of yourself, see physicians as needed, keep the attorney informed of your medical care, and forward all inquiries about the wreck to your attorney.   Once you have finished your medical treatment, or you have been told by a doctor that you are as good as you are going to get, the attorney will generally finish ordering in the medical records and put together a comprehensive demand package to send to the insurance company to try to resolve the case.  Once the insurance company receives this demand, they often take about 10 days or so before they get back to the attorney with an offer or a denial of liability.  If they come back with an offer of settlement, the attorney will try to negotiate them higher in a process of letters and phone calls that can often take weeks if not longer.  Ultimately, at some point in the process, the insurance company will tell the attorney what their highest offer is.  At that point, you will have a decision to make as to whether to accept the offer or file a lawsuit in court.  If the insurance company has denied liability off the bat, the decision has been made for you.  The only option at that point is to litigate. 

III.           How much will my case settle for?

This is the question that most people really want to know.  And I don’t blame them.  They haven’t sought out an attorney for the fun of it.  They are looking to be compensated for their injuries and losses.  Let me again be very clear about something.  There is no guarantee a case will settle.  No guarantee that a case will be won.  There are simply no guarantees in the law.  Generally speaking though, as far as settlement is concerned, it seems like the insurance companies are still using an injured person’s medical bills as an indicator of the significance of their injury as well as the amount of pain and suffering that they have gone through.  Although this is not always the case, for a clear liability wreck, where the other driver is at fault, insurance companies tend to offer between 2 to 3 times the medical bills for a settlement.  That is, if you have an attorney representing you.  So, say you have $3,000.00 in medical bills and the other driver was at fault.  What I have generally seen is insurance companies offer between $6,000.00 to $9,000.00 to settle a case like that.  Sometimes more, sometimes less.  Again, no guarantees, just general information based on experience.  Additionally, you can also sometimes get compensated for lost wages caused directly by the collisions and ensuing injuries and related medical treatment.

Now, there are some factors which can cause the settlement value of a car accident case to increase – sometimes dramatically.  For example, if the person who caused the wreck was drunk or under the influence of drugs.  This significantly changes the value of the case.  The reason is that you are now looking at a case with the possibility of punitive damages as well as actual damages.  Punitive damages are only available when the driver who hit you was acting grossly negligent or reckless – drunk driving will usually get you there.  How much this increases the value of the case really just depends upon the case.  But I will say that I have seen it increase the value of cases dramatically. 

Another factor that can increase the value of a car wreck case is whether or not the person who hit you was on his cell phone or texting at the time of the wreck.  Society in general has become less tolerant of people who pay more attention to their phone calls or text messages than they do the road and traffic in front of them.  Punitive damages have been awarded in these type cases as well. 

IV.          What if the case doesn’t settle

If the case does not settle, either because the insurance company has not offered enough or has not offered anything, the only other option to try to receive compensation is to file a lawsuit in court.  This is a whole other topic by itself and will be addressed in another blog to follow shortly.