Personal Injury Lawsuit Process

Answer:

If you’re here, chances are you suffered a serious personal injury accident in the city or state of New York. Your question might be, “What are the steps that you need to take in a lawsuit?” A lawsuit is when you take a claim and you actually file the claim in court, but there are many steps that have to come into play before you do that. Initially, the first step would be to investigate. We need to find out who the entities are or the individuals who caused the harm. We need to find out who the insurance companies are. We need to gather the medical records. We need to gather evidence from the scene of the accident. All of this stuff must be done first, and then we will take the next step.

The next step would be to file the lawsuit. That’s the document where we’re actually filing a complaint against the individual entity that caused the harm. We’ll usually file it in the Supreme Court in the state of New York in the venue where the plaintiff or defendant lives. If it’s the city of New York, it could be Queens County, New York County, Bronx County, or Staten Island. If it’s Long Island, it could be Nassau County or it could be upstate. It could be Westchester County, Suffolk County, or one of the many other counties in the state of New York. That would be the first step of the actual filing of the lawsuit.

The second step would be to get an answer, then we would go through what’s called a discovery process where we would provide the defense attorneys who are representing the defendant authorization with medical records. We’ll send the medical records that we have in the file. We’d have to send them photographs that we might have and various other items that need to go back and forth. Not only are we sending these to the defendant, but we’re also receiving documents pursuant to our demands from the defendant, and then we’ll set up what’s called a preliminary conference in court. We’ll sit down with the court and set a schedule for the completion of discovery and depositions. It’s a long process that will eventually either lead to a resolution or a trial.