Our law firm provides free consultations to injured victims of automobile collisions, slip and fall incidents, dog bite incidents, and wrongful death in the State of Ohio.
If you’re injured and weighing your options, you likely have many questions on your mind. In our experience, the most common question we hear is:
“How long will my personal injury case take?”
Most of our personal injury cases in Ohio involve a potential client getting involved in an auto accident and sustaining soft tissue injuries that include neck pain, back pain, headaches, sprains, and strains. Typically, these types of cases take about 3-5 months (from the date of the accident) to resolve depending on the length of time that it takes for our clients to complete their medical care and treatment.
Let’s take a closer look at the variables that impact the length of a personal injury case in Ohio.
Preparing the Comprehensive Settlement Package
Once a client is finished with their treatment and has obtained a clear bill of health, we prepare a comprehensive settlement package that summarizes for the insurance adjuster the full extent of our client’s injuries, limitations, and restrictions. It also summarizes in detail all of their medical care and treatments.
Once we are ready to send their settlement package out to their adjuster, it usually takes a client’s adjuster 40 to 60 days to respond to our settlement package and provide us with a settlement offer.
Before we send out a settlement package, we always thoroughly review that settlement package with our client and provide our client with applicable jury verdicts. We also provide them a range of value to provide them with an idea of what their claim is worth. We always inflate our settlement demand to give us room to negotiate.
Negotiations
Once the adjustor is ready to negotiate, it usually takes 2-3 weeks to complete negotiations. We always keep our clients apprised of all settlement offers.
Filing Lawsuits
We only recommend filing a lawsuit when an adjustor has undervalued our client’s claim and not tendered a final settlement offer that is within the range of value that we recommended to our client.
In situations where an adjustor has undervalued a client’s claim, we strongly recommend filing a lawsuit.
In the event that a lawsuit has to be filed, it usually takes 13 to 18 months for the case to go to trial in Franklin County, Ohio. Many times, our cases get rescheduled, and we do not get the first available trial date. This can cause clients to feel very frustrated. It usually takes 6-8 months from the date of the filing of the Complaint to get our cases in the proper position to reengage in further settlement negotiations.
Questions? Need to set up a free consultation? Contact us for additional details.
