The Stages on Filing a Personal Injury Claim (Part II)

After you have been able to be acquainted a little bit about some specifics of the Tort Law on the first part of this article, we will now proceed on discussing the filing of a formal personal injury claim. First, I would like to reiterate that we could not consider any two lawsuits similar to each other. They vary depending on the instances that brought the legal action. However, the following outline is generally utilized in cases that involve personal injury litigation.

Filing of the Complaint
There will never be a case, unless a plaintiff brings his complaint to the proper authority or court. A personal injury lawsuit usually starts with the filing of a formal complaint followed by the service of Court Summons. Yet, it is illegal to combine two or more accusations in a single complaint. This means that in case the plaintiff has two or more cases against a single person, his litigation attorney should properly guide him to file separate charges that contain different accusations.

After the court has received the complaint, it will properly inform the accused or the defendant of such charges by serving him a copy of the Summons and Complaint. The defendant then will be given thirty days prior to the date of receiving summons and complaint to make his response in the accusations. He may also challenge the said complaints by including a “motion to strike” on his response.

Usually, the filing of a “motion to strike” is somewhat a form of tactics utilized by the attorney of the defendant to make some delays on the case litigation proceedings. It would typically cause the court at least two months to come up with their ruling on the matter. If they found a basis on the defendant’s petition, they may sustain the motion and ask the plaintiff’s litigation attorney to revise the complaint and start all over with the process.

Discovery of the Case
Once the complaint draft has been finalized and accepted by both parties, they will now proceed to the “discovery” procedure wherein they will ask each other to present their evidences that they will be using in order to defend their statements.

Both parties may utilize one or more of the following methods in a discovery procedure:
• Interrogatories
• Demand for documents
• Admission of allegations
• Deposition
• Serving subpoenas to obtain documents from other parties
Search for Los Angeles County Litigation Attorneys who are qualified and highly experienced with regards to Los Angeles personal injury litigation.

Rainier used to work in a publishing company as a writer and eventually became an associate editor. He dealt in writing instructional materials for secondary and tertiary students. His passion in writing inspired him to read a lot and subsequently enabled him to gain more knowledge and skills.