More and more people are turning to the court system as a means of seeking compensation for a personal injury they have suffered at the hands or negligence of another. You could be involved in a personal injury lawsuit for any number of reasons.
If someone is injured on your property or while under your care, they are entitled to file a personal injury claim against you. This could include, but it not limited to, anything from falling on a small spill on the kitchen floor of your home, tripping over something left negligently in an aisle of a store you own or even a child getting injured while under your supervision. If you are the aggrieved party you must file your personal injury lawsuit within a certain period of time.
The statues of limitations in your state, or the state where the incident occurred, will determine how long you have to file a lawsuit. The statutes of limitations are, simply put, a certain time frame that starts from the time the injury occurred, and extends to a specific date. For instance, if the statutes of limitations in your state is 2 years, you have no more than 2 years to file a personal injury lawsuit from the date your suffered the injury. Once you file, a trial date will be set and witness will be called.
Often times, both parties involved in the suit will call in experts to give testimony as a means to defend their positions on the suit. An expert witness is considered to be an individual who has some sort of expertise on the testimony they will give, and their statements are therefore given much more credit than the testimony of a lay person. In any event, once both parties involved in the lawsuit have their witnesses ready, the trail usually moves along quickly. This is because many expert witnesses are strapped for time, and are only available for a short period of time.
With regard to compensation from a personal injury lawsuit, the time it takes to actually receive any form of compensation will depend heavily on how long it takes to be heard before the court, how long the trail lasts, and how long the judge takes to make his or her determinations. If you are a successful plaintiff in a personal injury lawsuit the manner in which you will receive your compensation may vary.
You could receive a one-time payout for the total amount of the award given to you, or you may be allocated small payments over a certain period of time that you will receive monthly or annually until the full compensation awarded to you has been paid.