Arbutus, MD Personal Injury Lawyer

Getting injured is never part of anyone’s plan. Serious injuries often lead to lengthy hospital stays and long-term recovery regimens. This can be very frustrating and upsetting for the victims of various kinds of accidents. Moreover, medical bills for your treatment and recovery can easily become very expensive, even with the help of health insurance policies you may have.

Fortunately, we can help you. Our lawyers have represented many personal injury clients across Maryland and can lend our skills to help you with your case. When you are injured, you need all the help you can get, so look no further. We can help if you were injured in a truck accident, car accident, slip and fall, construction accident, or other circumstances.

For free help with your case, call Rice, Murtha & Psoras’s personal injury lawyers at (410) 694-7291.

The Personal Injury Lawsuit Process in Arbutus, MD

Personal injury lawsuits take a long time. You do not simply go to trial right away. Many personal injury lawsuits will not even reach trial, and get resolved before that point. There is a significant amount of work that goes into pursuing a personal injury lawsuit. Below, our personal injury lawyers have given a brief rundown of how personal injury lawsuits work so that you know what to expect.

Initial Meeting with Our Attorneys

The first point of contact in a personal injury lawsuit is meeting with a lawyer. When you first contact our attorneys, we can hear about your case and give general advice regarding your situation. If you formally retain us as counsel, we can then dive into the specific facts of your situation and tailor our service to fit your needs.

If you have done any prior gathering of evidence before retaining counsel, it would be a good idea to bring that to our lawyers when we start working on your case. Anything that you have may prove useful, from witness statements to pictures to video recordings or even handwritten notes.

Discovery

A very laborious – and very important – part of the legal process is “discovery.” Discovery is a process where lawyers working on a case gather and exchange information. It may feel odd to see lawyers who have opposite goals give each other details about the case, but discovery is an important part of legal proceedings and helps make sure that both sides are working from a similar set of facts. Additionally, discovery helps to cut down on any surprises that could appear at a potential trial. Although it makes for great drama on television, surprises in a jury trial are almost never a good thing in real life.

There are two main kinds of discovery in personal injury lawsuits: interrogatories and requests for production.

Interrogatories are requests for information and people who may know certain things. For example, if one side of a case is going to employ an expert witness, the other side may have an interrogatory asking for the name, phone number, and credentials of any expert witnesses who are going to participate in the case.

Requests for production, on the other hand, are asking for tangible things, although electronic communication is also asked for in requests for production. Things like files, photographs, car design specifications, and pretty much any other physical thing can be asked for in a request for production.

Although attorneys are sharing information in discovery, they do not have to share everything. If a request from one side is unreasonable, the other side can say as much and not respond to it. Another way that information can be exempt from discovery is if it is privileged. An example of this kind of information would be conversations about a trial strategy you and our lawyers have since that would fall under attorney-client privilege.

Depositions

Another very important part of the pre-trial process is a process called depositions. A deposition is a formal, under-oath interview where the deponent – the person being asked questions – our lawyers, and the opponent’s lawyers are present. The lawyer who is against the deponent gets to ask them questions about the case to get as much information as they can, while the deponent’s lawyer can object to any questions they feel are not reasonable.

It is virtually guaranteed that you will be deposed in a personal injury lawsuit. Answer every question truthfully, as lying during a deposition will be found out, and that act is worse for your legal prospects than any bad fact that could be present in your personal injury case.

Depositions can frequently take hours, and they are done for each person who is expected to speak at trial. Completing every deposition needed for a case, therefore, can take a long time.

Pre-Trial Proceedings

As a potential trial approaches, our lawyers can file what are called motions with the court. Motions are simply a formal way of asking the court to do a certain thing. For example, motions to suppress evidence are frequently filed before trial. These motions aim to prevent evidence that may have been obtained illegally or is not relevant to the case from being used. Some motions are more mundane, like rescheduling a trial date if it does not work out for one of the parties.

Trial

Finally, cases that have still not been resolved or settled go to trial. Both sides of the case will have a good idea of the arguments the other side will make, and the only thing left to do is for each lawyer to present their case to the court. After all the evidence has been seen and all the arguments have been heard, the jury makes their decision and renders a verdict.

Talk with Our Arbutus, MD Personal Injury Lawyers Now

Rice, Murtha & Psoras have personal injury lawyers standing by and ready to help you when you call us at (410) 694-7291.