Your chances of winning a personal injury lawsuit depend on the strength of your case and many other factors. There is no way of knowing your case’s likely outcome without understanding the circumstances, facts, and other details.
Your best resource for understanding your lawsuit and other options for closing your case is your Florida personal injury lawyer. Your legal team can build the strongest case possible to support your financial recovery, whether through settlement negotiations or a jury award at trial.
Building a Strong Case to Support Your Personal Injury Lawsuit
The evidence available to build a compelling case is the most important factor in determining whether you can win compensation for your injuries. You will want to identify, gather, and analyze as much evidence as possible to strengthen your case against the negligent party, showing how their actions caused your injuries. If you work with an attorney, your law firm can handle most of these tasks.
Investigating an injury incident and building a case against the negligent party can be difficult. Some steps are straightforward, while others require more knowledge and resources. In a typical personal injury lawsuit, some of the tasks necessary to develop a strong case against the liable party could include:
- Obtaining official documents, such as the police report and relevant medical records
- Identifying and interviewing eyewitnesses
- Surveying the scene where the injuries occurred
- Seeking any available video footage of the incident
- Working with experts to better understand what happened, the injuries that resulted, and future care costs
- Gathering documentation of damages
If you sue the liable party, much of this work will occur during the discovery phase of the lawsuit. This is when each side prepares their case for trial. In addition to the steps above, this process allows your team to ask questions of the liable party and vice versa. You could gain additional information through:
- Interrogatories: These are written answers to the other party’s questions, provided under oath.
- Depositions: A deposition is essentially giving testimony to the other party through an in-person interview, given under oath and in front of a court reporter.
What Can You Do to Improve Your Chances of Winning a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
The best thing you can do when seeking fair compensation in your personal injury case is to work with an attorney in your area. Personal injury lawyers are familiar with the common causes of injuries, how to build strong cases, and how to navigate the legal system and win compensation.
Handling your case independently can be overwhelming at almost every step in the process. Personal injury lawyers have experience, knowledge, and resources that you do not. Plus, they aren’t injured or trying to return to work while managing an insurance claim or lawsuit. With a lawyer, you can focus on recovering from your injuries while they work on recovering your compensation.
A personal injury law firm can document your damages and value your case accurately. This makes it possible to reach a fair settlement or know when a lawsuit might be necessary. In addition, most firms handle these cases based on contingency. If your lawyer works on contingency, you won’t have to pay them upfront to get legal representation.
What Do You Have to Prove to Win Compensation in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Personal injury cases hinge on negligence. To hold the at-fault party liable and recover compensation, you must show they acted carelessly or recklessly and caused your injuries. This requires having the evidence to show all four elements of negligence:
- They owed you a duty of care, acting in a certain way to prevent injuries
- They breached their duty
- Their action or inaction was the proximate cause of your injuries
- You suffered harm: physical, emotional, and/or financial
For example, imagine your injuries occurred when a driver failed to yield while turning left. Traffic laws created a duty of care, meaning they had an obligation to yield to you. They failed to yield, which was the immediate cause of the collision. You required medical care, missed work, and had to repair your car.
With help from your attorney, you can document your recoverable damages and seek fair compensation in the case. If this requires filing a lawsuit and taking the case to trial, your personal injury lawyer can be ready to do that. Some even provide mock trials so you know what to expect when your case goes to the jury.
Are There Alternatives to Going to Trial in a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Most lawsuits do not go to a jury trial. Settlement talks with the insurance company usually continue even while navigating the legal process. The most common way these cases end is through an out-of-court settlement. As each side gathers evidence and gets a better look at what happened, the insurer may increase their offer.
Settling these cases is often the best option for all involved. While victims don’t want to leave money on the table and insurers don’t want to pay more than necessary, both parties must turn over all control of the outcome when they give the case to a jury.
While managing pretrial motions and discovery, your attorney can continue with settlement negotiations, too. Some courts require mediation or other alternative dispute resolution options before they will set a trial date.
Discuss Your Options With a Personal Injury Lawyer
At GED Lawyers, we provide free initial consultations for personal injury victims in our service areas, which include all parts of Florida and Massachusetts. You can discuss your case and next steps with our team. We can explain your options and how our attorneys help others in similar circumstances.
Contact us online or over the phone to talk to our team about your case for free.
