The Importance of Discovery During a Personal Injury Case

Answer:

What is the discovery in a personal injury lawsuit in Idaho? Discovery is basically a term that signifies what each lawyer is doing to prepare for the trial and to discover literally what the other side is doing and intends to present at trial. The discovery phase of a case begins after the complaint is filed, the answer is filed by the defense lawyer, and you’re basically in the middle of a lawsuit. From that point forward up until the trial is generally considered the discovery phase of a case. Again, it’s each side’s opportunity to discover what the other side is going to say at trial.

There are various forms of discovery. There are a lot of written requests back and forth: request to produce documents, request to give narrative information, how did the accident happen, for example, or something like that from your perspective. There, we’re working on the written discovery. The lawyer would work with you, the claimant, to make sure that we’re putting together the most accurate information about – responding to their written discovery that is. Another form of discovery is depositions, which is sworn testimony under oath in a conference room, not at the courthouse, but with a court reporter taking down what is said from a claimant’s perspective. The defense lawyer takes the claimants deposition, just asking a series of questions that are being recorded and are under oath. If someone has to have a deposition, the lawyer should be working very closely with the claimant, with the plaintiff, with the injured person, to get ready for that deposition. The preparation for a deposition should be a very involved process so that the claimant goes into the deposition confident that they know what’s going to happen and they’re prepared basically. There are a couple of other forms of discovery that can involve other people like other people having their depositions taken or other people or entities being subpoenaed to produce information that’s relevant to the case. Basically, it’s each side’s lawyer pursuing the discovery of everything the other side intends to present at trial is the short answer to that question. The plaintiff’s lawyers, people who represent injured victims, if they call themselves trial lawyers, they actually spend most of their time doing discovery. There are a lot of lawyers out there that only do discovery and actually don’t even go to jury trial. They don’t have the experience of going to jury trial. That’s not our firm, however, because our firm does have a significant amount of experience of actually going to jury and making appeals to juries on your behalf. I personally have had many jury trials that I’ve handled and have a track record of success. My law firm has a lot of success in pursuing jury trials and actual experience. If you have a need for a lawsuit, you need to have an experienced legal team on your behalf because discovery is just getting ready for the trial; the trial itself is a separate thing altogether. Either way, even during the discovery phase of a case, to properly prepare for that trial as you need to do, you need to have an experienced legal team like our law firm. If you have such a claim, please feel free to call us any time. Any of the other lawyers in our law firm has years and years’ worth of experience in actually engaging in lawsuits and trials.