Should I Settle or Go to Trial for My Personal Injury Case?

When you bring a personal injury claim, you’re asking for someone to reimburse you for all the losses and damages you’ve suffered because of their negligence. In most cases, it’s actually an insurance company that pays these losses, and your personal injury attorney in Salt Lake City will work with you to negotiate with the insurance company.

Most of these cases are settled out of court, but some of them do go to trial. It’s not possible to tell you what you should choose without knowing the details of your case, so contact an attorney to go over those details right away and keep reading for a general idea of how this decision is made.

Should I Settle or Go to Trial for My Personal Injury Case?

A very high number of cases are settled outside of court: as much as 90%. Understanding why requires thinking carefully about the benefits of a settlement versus the benefits of going to trial.

Benefits of Settlements

Fewer Costs

Trials are very expensive. There are legal fees, court costs, and, because they take longer and are more adversarial, it can require greater expense for gathering evidence and hiring expert witnesses. Thus, there’s good incentive for both you and the other side to settle. You don’t want to have to pay any more costs than are necessary, and if the court should force the other side to pay court costs and your attorney fees, they would lose out, too.

Less Stress

It’s not uncommon to feel outraged and upset after a personal injury and to assume that you would like to go straight to court and have the responsible party brought to justice. And while that is a very natural feeling, you are likely doing this for the first time and don’t understand the emotional toll that a trial can take. As strongly as you may feel right now, after things stretch on for months (as they often do in a trial), you may very well find yourself wishing the whole thing could just be over.

While a settlement may feel less satisfying because you are not putting the other party through a public trial, the settlement will also save you an enormous amount of stress and strain. That means you can focus on your recovery instead of spending time being concerned about your case.

Less Time

As mentioned above, it usually takes a lot less time to arrive at a settlement than to go through a trial. This means less stress and less money, yes, but it also just means less time. You can get back to your life more quickly, and you can get money coming in instead of waiting for months for a case to go through trial, and then possibly also an appeal, before you can access any of what you are owed.

More Predictable

When you settle out of court, you and the other party can keep most of the control, and there’s a lot of predictability. When you put your case in the hands of a judge or a jury, uncertainty always enters the picture. However strong your case may be, you just can’t guarantee what another person is going to do. You need to talk to your lawyer about the right decision here.

Your lawyer has a lot of experience with judges and juries and will have a much better sense of whether your case is strong enough to risk taking to trial. But in general, with the settlement, you have the peace of mind of knowing what’s going to happen.

Benefits of Going to Trial

Full Compensation

The primary reason you would want to go to court would be if the insurance company simply refuses to offer anything like a fair settlement. Ultimately, the decision is yours, but your lawyer can give you advice here on whether it’s likely you’re going to get full compensation if you take them to court. Bear in mind that sometimes it takes the actual act of filing a lawsuit to get the insurance company to start bargaining in good faith. Until you take that step, they hope that they can get you to give up and give in. This means sometimes the right thing to do is file a lawsuit in the hopes that it will improve negotiations. Even after you have filed, you can still come to a settlement.

Publicity

Depending on your situation, you may want to expose the liable party to the public eye. Most of the time when you’re dealing with a private injury, such as after a car accident, there is no benefit at all to dragging somebody to court. But if you’re dealing with, for example, a large corporation that has been making defective products, things could be different. The company may be trying to pay you off with a settlement and intends to continue producing shoddy products that can injure people; you may want to go to court to ensure there is public scrutiny of the company and that other people are aware of their behavior.

Possibility of Punitive Damages

Be aware that punitive damages are very, very rare in these cases. They are not awarded to reimburse you for any of your losses. Their sole purpose is to punish the liable party who caused your accident. Courts are very reluctant to add punitive damages, and you will have to convince them that the other party either intentionally injured you or acted with such gross negligence or recklessness that an example needs to be made of them. Again, the only way to know here is to talk with your lawyer.

Factors to Consider With Your Attorney

Strength of the Evidence

You need two types of evidence: evidence proving the fault of the other party and evidence showing the degree of harm that you have suffered. The stronger your evidence, the more likely the insurance company will offer a good settlement, and, if they don’t, that you will win if you go to trial.

For proving liability, you’ll need to be able to show things like witness statements, photographic or video evidence, or something else that makes their liability indisputable. When it comes to your damages, you need to be able to clearly connect what you’ve suffered to the accident where you were injured.

If you sought medical treatment immediately after the accident, that will be very helpful. If you delayed, it becomes easier for the other side to argue that maybe your injuries aren’t related to the accident or aren’t as bad as you say. Your lawyer will help you evaluate all your evidence to make the right decision.

Strategy and Skill

Another important factor is the strategy that you choose and the skill of your attorney. Negotiation is an important skill, and it’s actually a separate skill from courtroom prowess. You want an attorney who can do both: an attorney who has lots of experience in reaching favorable settlements for clients but who isn’t afraid to go to the courtroom when necessary and has a good track record there, as well.