Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
“Somebody walks in your office and the first question they say is…’I want to sue somebody. How soon can you file the lawsuit’? So, what’s your answer to them? Because, of course, they want it done yesterday. But that’s not how things work. I know that, so I want you to explain that.”
Spencer Freeman – Personal Injury Attorney – Pierce County, WA
“You know, it depends on the scenario. If somebody comes in to my office and says…’statute of limitations runs tomorrow. I need to get this filed’. I can, for sure, accomplish that. I can throw together a complaint and get it filed within a day, or within a couple of hours. If that’s what’s necessary to solve that problem. But that’s not necessarily the best way to go about it.”
Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
“Right. I would assume somebody gets injured, within a week or two they decide to come into your office and they ask that same question. Then, what do you say?”
Spencer Freeman – Personal Injury Attorney – Pierce County, WA
“Well, usually I would advise people to not file a lawsuit until you’ve healed. Or, you know how far your healing is going to go. Because you don’t really know the full value of a case or really what the issues are. When you file a lawsuit, you want to have as much knowledge as you can, about the issues that you’re going to face. Now, that doesn’t mean I haven’t done it. There’s been scenarios where an order to protect the client, we needed to file while they were still in the hospital and they weren’t even close to done recovering. But every case is a little bit different.
For me, when I file a lawsuit, I want to know that I’ve had enough time with the case, and with the file, to know what the issues are, so that I front-load my knowledge. And I’m not trying to learn the case as we are going through litigation. So, if you come in and say ‘I want to file a case tomorrow’, and you don’t have a statute of limitations problem, I’m going to do my best to calm you down and say ‘okay, let’s spend some time and talk about what the issues are, and get this put together correctly’. So that our litigation strategy is driven, based off knowledge, and not just off the emotion of wanting to file.”
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