A personal injury lawsuit is filed by a person who has been injured in an accident and believes another party is liable. Though it is possible to file a personal injury lawsuit without an attorney’s assistance, qualified legal counsel makes the process much easier and greatly increases the chances of receiving fair compensation for your physical, property, and emotional damages.
An attorney can help you through all of the following steps of filing a personal injury lawsuit in Louisiana
Gather evidence
Your attorney discusses the case with you (the plaintiff) and helps collect key evidence. If necessary, he or she might investigate to gather more evidence and bring in specialists to help support your case.
The Demand letter
Your attorney drafts and sends a demand letter to the alleged liable party (the defendant), his or her attorney, or the defendant’s insurer. This letter includes facts about the accident, your injuries, and requests a specific settlement amount by a certain date.
Filing a lawsuit
If your settlement request is not met, the next step is to file an injury lawsuit. With the help of an experienced Monroe injury lawyer, you then file a complaint against the defendant or defendants. Each of them is served a complaint and given a specified time to respond. Their reply is called an answer. The complaint and answer are filed with a court.
Discovery
Once the personal injury law suit is filed, the parties have a chance to gather more information. They can request replies to written questions, testimony and documents from each other and third parties.
Settlement & Trial
There is one final chance to reach a settlement in your injury lawsuit before trial. A judge may try to broker a deal between the attorneys or suggest a neutral mediator or arbitration.
The attorneys present their case before a judge or jury and a verdict is reached for either the plaintiff or defendant. If you receive a favorable decision, you then collect damages.
You owe it to yourself to see what the combined 135 years of courtroom experience at Rankin, Yeldell & Katz can do for you. We offer a risk-free, no-cost initial consultation on personal injury, auto accident, and SSD cases, and only charge you attorney fees when we recover on your claim. Contact our Monroe lawyers online or call us at 318-239-4364 today.
We represent clients throughout Northeast Louisiana, including Bastrop, Monroe, Oak Grove, Farmerville, Rayville, Morehouse Parish, Ouachita Parish, Union Parish, West Carroll Parish, Richland Parish, Madison Parish, and East Carroll Parish.