Personal Injury Settlement Timeline

Answer:

It’s natural to wonder how long your case is going to take. Is it going to settle? What is going to resolve? When is the claim going to resolve?

I’m incurring these medical expenses. I need to get them paid. How long does it take? The answer is that terrible lawyer’s answer: it depends.

A personal injury claim in Idaho can resolve quickly or it can resolve after many years of litigation and fight. What are the things that impact that? Your personal injury case may be simple. Your injuries are small, the damages are limited, and a resolution can be worked out easily with an insurance company or a corporation that caused you damage.

Or it could be the fact they dispute the scope of your injuries. That makes it go a long time. More doctors are involved. They hire doctors. The litigation process is extended.

We also always want the injured person to have gotten as healthy as they can be. Maximum medical improvement is a term the doctors and the lawyers use in the process of injury claims.

The question you always have in an injury case centers on what the future holds for you. What’s going to happen with this injury later? I had a back injury. Is it going to bother me in 10 years, or 15 years, or 20 years? Sometimes it takes a while to evaluate that and get the medical professionals involved in evaluating that question for your personal injury case here in Idaho. That can make it take a long time.

The real answer for how long it takes for your case to settle is it depends. There are even those cases where you can’t get it resolved. You file a lawsuit. You can’t get it resolved during the 16, 18, 20 months prior to trial. You can’t get it resolved on the courthouse steps like they say.

The case goes to trial. The jury comes in and gives a verdict. What happens? The other side appeals. There are even times when it takes year after year after year. You go up on appeal. You have to try it again.

Those are the scary cases. They’re the outliers; they don’t happen often, but they can happen. Just like very few cases can settle very quickly, there’s very few cases that take a really long time and a whole realm of cases that cover in the middle. If you want to talk about your case, just call somebody at the firm. We’re happy to give you some advice, some direction, some guidance, and review your situation.