In this video I answer a question people often ask me, “will my case go to trial?” The short answer to that is probably not. I base that on the reality that only about half of 1% of all cases go to trial.
The reason for that is that people simply don’t want to leave the ultimate decision on the outcome of their case to a judge who could never really know the case as well as the people that have been involved with the case over a number of years. Typically both the injured person and the other driver’s insurer want to have some control over the eventual outcome and that’s why we typically resolve injury cases by way of a negotiation or mediation.
Neither the insurance company for the person at fault nor the injured person wants to leave the ultimate outcome to somebody else. The person that’s injured and the insurance company for the at fault party want to retain control over the process and ultimately over the outcome.
Once you go to trial you lose all control over the eventual outcome.
Obviously you’re going to put your best case forward to the judge. However, you don’t know what the judge is going to think of your witnesses. That’s true for both the plaintiff and the defence.
You don’t know when you will get the judge’s decision. There is no guarantee that you will get a decision at the end of the trial; it’s up to the judge to decide when that decision will come out and it’s not unusual to see their decision come out a year or even two years after the trial.
So going to trial can be a very long process. Most claims are either settled or mediated to settlement and do not end up in trial. Having said that, it is very important to have a lawyer that has trial experience – you certainly don’t want to be in that ½ of one percent that ends up in trial without an experienced and successful trial lawyer.