So a personal injury lawsuit is something that is filed in a courthouse but it is only filed if we are unable to informally resolve the claim.
And i would say a significant portion of claims that are brought are able to resolve by presenting informal information to an insurance company documenting everything that has occurred and using the weight of our practice to leverage a case through the settlement process.
But there is always cases where we have a disagreement.
The insurance company is not right 100% of time in their evaluation and so when that happens the next step is to file formal paperwork in a courthouse and we usually file that either in the courthouse in the county where the accident occurred or in the county where the defendant was living at the time that we are bringing a case against him.
And what’s interesting i think that people don’t understand about lawsuits is that even though there is insurance that is involved, so the at-fault driver has insurance, in Colorado can’t sue the at-fault driver’s insurance company even thought at-fault driver’s insurance company is the entity that is actually making the decisions behind the scene.
When you buy an auto insurance policy, you give the insurance company the right to make decisions on your behalf.
Say you were at fault and injured somebody, if your insurance company that you paid a premium to isn’t fair to that person, who get sued.
What happens in Colorado is that even though that we are informally trying to negotiate with, if those negotiations fail we will file a lawsuit against the at-fault driver themselves.
So on the lawsuit paperwork it actually says our client’s name versus the at-fault driver and the at-fault driver’s insurance company is not there at all.
We file that in the courthouse and we are required to list out all of the various claims that we want to bring and we have to then make allegations about what damages by category that we are going to attempt to recover.
That gets filed in the courthouse and then the court takes control of the system from that point.
From that point, we have to send that out and serve that personally on the at-fault driver and then they turn it over to their insurance company;their insurance company hires a lawyer who then steps in and defends the case and so in the courtroom and throughout the lawsuit it looks like it is my client versus the at-fault driver when really all of the strings are being pulled from the at-fault driver’s perspective by at-fault driver’s insurance company.