I’m from the UK suing isn’t as big a thing here. I’m 30 and I have never even spoke to a lawyer/ solicitor once so that whole world is a mystery to me. TIA!
In: 20
It’ll vary wildly by jurisdiction and based on what you’re suing over of course, but here’s a short version of my experience with a personal injury lawsuit in Queensland Australia (it was under state law). I imagine there’s some variation on all of this throughout the *common law* anglosphere, civil law countries are probably wildly different.
I was attacked whilst riding my motorcycle by a very large dog that’d escaped the house it lived at. Serious injuries I carry to this day as a result. After getting out of hospital and realising I had serious financial issues both with healthcare and loss of work (9 months) and permanent injury as a result, I personally went and had a polite conversation with the dog owners. They’d already had a casual conversation with a solicitor at that point as it happened. I explained my situation, and checked they had insurance. He told me his general advice was that it was covered under his household liability insurance. I pretty much at that point said alright, I’m going to raise a lawsuit over it. I had no intention of costing THEM money directly, but if their insurance would cover all my costs, great.
At that point I had a conversation with a law firm. We had a meeting, they asked me lots of questions, and advised me they believed we had a valid case. I paid an amount of money in good faith to secure their services (EDIT – from memory it was $500AUD), the balance of the suit to be paid on conclusion. This was NOT a no-win-no-fee firm, so I’d be liable for their fees either way. At that point they wrote what amounts to a letter of claim to the dog owners, who then would have forwarded it to their insurance company. From that point on, pretty much most interactions were between my solicitor and the insurance company.
We got medical evaluations, they also got medical evaluations, the solicitor through a lot of interviews with me and established tables of valid claims worked out a total claim amount. That went to the courts. The courts mandated mediation.
That whole process to mediation took three years. Once mediation was ordered my solicitor advised me it was time to hire a barrister, which we did. Mediation then took place between my barrister, with my solicitor briefing him, and the barrister and solicitor from the insurance company. At the end of those negotiations (which started with a fuckoff ridiculous low-ball offer and ended up with a middling low-ball offer from the insurance company) I was given the advice from my barrister that whilst I *might* get a higher amount in court, it was highly unpredictable in domestic pet cases, and it was probably just best to settle. I took that advice and settled.
All told fees and whatnot worked out to 20% of the settlement amount, took about four weeks after we all agreed on it to clear, I got a cheque.
I’ve got to say the whole experience wasnt worth the cheque.
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