Settling Without Going to Trial

Answer:

Here at Morgenstern & Herd, we are trial lawyers. That means that when you have a case, there are any number of ways that your case can be resolved without going to a full-blown trial in Florida. What we do initially is we help guide you and your personal injury cases to obtain the appropriate medical treatment. You need to understand and we have to understand what all of your medical injuries are so that we have obtained treatment for you, either through your health insurance or through a provider that will wait to be paid, so that we know what all of your injuries are. We often try and 99% of the time we try to get your case resolved without even filing a lawsuit. When you are initially injured, you have what’s called a claim. We don’t run out and file a lawsuit the first day unless there’s some reason that we need to do that. For example, if the insurance company, we have a case right now where our client was seriously injured on a motorcycle. The other insurance company went out and hired a lawyer right away. In that case, we filed a lawsuit right away. We’re often able to initially, once you get to a substantial point in your medical treatment, we can submit a demand to the at fault insurance company for your personal injury to get compensation for your injuries. The beauty of that is that the attorney fees are lower, your expenses are lower, and so we can maximize by resolving your case without filing a lawsuit your recovery about 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time, after we file a lawsuit, we’re required to have mediation before we can get a trial in Hillsborough County. In Pinellas County, we can’t even get a trial without mediating. We mediate first and that means that all parties attend a session where there’s another lawyer who mediates between the parties to see if we can get a resolution. We had one yesterday and we were able to get a good resolution for our client, payment of his medical bills, compensation for his bodily injuries, without going to trial. There’s another percentage of cases and lately it’s been variable, all of us for COVID, but if the at fault parties are not going to be fair with you about your bodily injuries, you’re in the driver’s seat. If you’re not happy with the compensation after we give you our best advice, then we spend time getting that case ready for trial. It’s more expensive but you have a right to have a jury of six peers decide your injury claim, whether or not the at fault parties are 100% responsible and what your damages are. We at Morgenstern & Herd will try your cases but we do everything we can to get your case resolved without putting you through a trial.