Orange County Personal Injury Lawyer
Following the filing of the lawsuit, the lawsuit is filed by the court and a copy returned to us. (1) a process server is hired to take the lawsuit to the defendant’s agent for service of process, this should take between 5 days and 30 days (2) once the defendant receives the lawsuit they have 30 days to respond and often ask for a 2 week extension, so they will like respond in 6 weeks (3) once they respond they will send us a copy of the answer filed in court and send out what is called written discovery, which is basically written questions for you and your wife to answer, and we have 30 days to answer these questions, you and your wife need to answer within 2 weeks so we have time to read your answers and put in the correct format and with all the fancy headings, pleading paper and to comply with all the other requirements (4) we will also ask the defendant a lot of written questions and they too have 30 days to respond (5) sometime later a time will be scheduled to ask you questions in person in what is called a deposition (6) we likewise have the right to ask the defendant questions in person (7) in the written questions they will identify witnesses, product engineers and designers and we will likely ask them questions at a deposition as well (8) at a later time the defendants will be asking our experts questions pertaining to the defective design and we likewise will be asking them questions (9) sometime within the next 6 to 9 months there will be a court hearing called a case management conference where a trial date will be set and cut off dates to get things done as well mediation or a settlement conference (10) the mediation or settlement conference is an opportunity to try and resolve the case informally following the discovery, once both side have had an opportunity to look what kind of information each side there is an opportunity to resolve the case informally. Mediation is outside the court and a settlement conference is with a judge, so one or the other will take place. Even when you already know the case cannot resolve the judge will more likely than not order that one or the other take place. (11) If the case cannot be resolved informally then the case will go to trial.