The court system is a difficult world to navigate in the best of situations—but when you add to it the hardships of a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) the processes become even more complex. To help you through this difficult process we’ve put together this guide to help.
Let’s begin with a checklist of tasks, steps and processes you need to complete in order to successfully navigate your Traumatic Brain Injury in our court system:
1. Begin gathering evidentiary support in order to build a strong claim.
2. Total up your provable losses that you’ve incurred due to the accident, including: medical and care expenses, home care expenses, lost income, lost opportunities and other out-of-pocket costs associated with your short- and long-term care.
3. Your total losses will certainly not be under $25,000 so do not take the route to small claims court.
4. Your claim will proceed in a higher court, in which case you will want to hire an experienced personal injury lawyer.
5. File your claim within the limitation period (which is two years for accident victims) and then follow-up paperwork, which will have its own timelines.
6. After your claim is filed you will begin pre-trial process, which includes the sharing of documents between legal parties—in interest of full disclosure.
7. After the Discovery process the defense will likely decide to make a settlement offer.
8. We then discuss the settlement offer and you decide if you would like to take the offer or continue on to court proceedings.
Deciding whether or not to accept an out-of-court settlement offer is a personal decision that must be weighed carefully. The reason it must be weighed is that while an upfront settlement is almost always smaller than the amount claimed in the suit, it does have some benefits. These benefits include avoiding a lengthy trial that can take well over a year, an instant payoff that you may desperately need to cover the extended care you need—and it keeps a long, costly court battle from eating away at your potential compensation award with expensive legal fees. Unfortunately, if the offers made are unacceptable, then you should proceed to trial with our experienced trial lawyers.
Conversely, you may feel that the settlement offered is too low and you’re financial prepared to go the distance with a trial. These are a few of the elements that we’ll discuss as we continue throughout the process together.
If you’re ready to file a claim for the Traumatic Brain Injury you sustained in an accident—then call the expert personal injury lawyers in Toronto, Whitby and Oshawa at Conte & Associates today.
