Continued from Court Proceedings in a Tennessee Injury Case (Part 1)
It is also very dangerous to wait to hire an experienced injury attorney until the last few weeks or days before your time to file suit expires. First of all, it is very dangerous for you or an attorney to wait until the statute of limitations has almost expired to file suit. Also, an experienced attorney will never file suitwithout fully investigating the facts of the case. In fact, attorneys in Tennessee have taken an ethical oath not to file suit until all of the alleged facts have been reasonably investigated. For this reason, many experienced attorneys-including myself – will not accept a case where there may not be sufficient time to thoroughly investigate the case before filing.
Once we’ve filed suit on your behalf, we begin the discovery phase, which is simply where both sides “discover” evidence. This will be done through interrogatories, depositions and Request for Production of Documents. This can take some time as both sides will be exhausting all available tools to strengthen their cases. At my firm, we make sure our clients understand every phase of the process and we will walk you through every step to make sure you are comfortable and educated about your case.
Once discovery is finally complete and both parties know what evidence each will have at trial, the parties often re-enter settlement negotiations.
If a settlement cannot be reached after the discovery phase has ended, the case will proceed to trial.