How Long Does It Take to Resolve a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Connecticut?

It’s always hard to predict exactly how long a personal injury lawsuit will take because each one is unique. The best way to find out how long your case may take is to speak with an East Hartford, CT personal injury attorney to go over your case. However, the following can give you a general idea of what to expect.

In general, you can expect a PI case to take between a couple of months and a couple of years. The biggest single factor is liability. If liability is crystal clear, meaning there is no dispute over who is responsible and to what degree, then the case will typically resolve fairly quickly. If there’s a lot of dispute about liability, things can stretch on for a long time.

Here are some other factors that can shorten or extend the timeline:

Severity of Injuries

In most cases, you can’t effectively bring a claim until you’ve reached what’s known as Maximum Medical Improvement. This is the point at which it’s not expected that you will recover further. It can be quite difficult to project expenses into the future, so it’s best to wait until the medical picture is as clear as possible before bringing a claim.

It can take some time to reach MMI, however, and there can also be debate about whether you have reached it. If you’re not going to reach MMI for some years, or if you will never fully recover and will need extended long-term care, you’ll have to be able to prove this in negotiations or in the courtroom.

Multiple Injured Parties

If you were injured in a multi-car accident, for example, and there are several people with injuries and multiple parties with potential liability, things can become extremely complicated. It’s important that your case not fall through the cracks, which makes having your own attorney especially important.

Refusal to Negotiate

If the other side refuses to negotiate in good faith, this will typically extend the situation. This is often tied to the clarity of liability: if liability is clear, the other side is less likely to fight back. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes even when it’s obvious that someone they cover is responsible for an accident, an insurance company will still refuse to acknowledge the extent of your injuries or the reality of your losses and offer any kind of reasonable settlement in negotiation.

The Complexity of the Accident

One last thing that can make things more difficult is a highly complex accident situation, where it’s difficult to work out what really happened. If your lawyer has to retain multiple expert witnesses to reconstruct the accident, this can take time.

Talk to an East Hartford, CT Personal Injury Attorney Today

For specific help with your accident claim and to find out better what to expect, contact us now at the Adler Law Group, LLC in East Hartford, CT to speak with an attorney.

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