Episode 9 of Jersey Justice Podcast: A Deep Dive into the Litigation Process With New Jersey Workplace Injury Lawyers

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The information shared on this podcast is for general information purposes only. Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any individual case or situation. This information is not intended to create and does not constitute an attorney-client relationship. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

Welcome to Jersey Justice, a civil law podcast that shares

practical tips and stories about personal and workplace injuries.

Joined two of the brightest New Jersey injury attorneys, Gerald Clark

and Mark Morris of Clark Law Firm.

As they take you behind the scenes of.

Justice and civil law.

But first, a quick disclaimer.

The information shared on this podcast is for general information purposes only.

Nothing on this site should be taken as legal advice for any

individual case or situation.

This information is not intended to create and does not constitute

an attorney client relationship.

today we're gonna be continuing the conversation about construction

accidents and also the litigation process and what happens.

And I'm here with Jerry and Mark, and we're gonna be continuing this talk.

And today we really wanna dive into some aspects of what happens.

For example, if, let's say, Clark Law Firm, accept your case.

Like what can a client expect, you know, in that procedure and that

process of what's gonna happen.

So Jerry, start us off with that information.

Thanks, dimple.

So the, the way it works, we talked about the intakes and the

intake process in a prior episode.

So if we accept the case and decide to move forward with it, we'll do some

investigation that could take, you know, , it's hard to say how long that

takes because all cases are different.

It could take days, weeks, months, sometimes longer If we decide to

then move forward with the case.

Basically we'll start by sending claim letters out.

To the contractors on the job that we think were involved.

The different parties that we think were involved, generally, they'll send

them to their insurance company and then the insurance company will start

to be, corresponding with us, asking us questions, that kind of thing.

In our experience, these cases pretty much never settled before

a lawsuit is filed, usually often because there's a lot of parties

involved, the injuries can be severe.

And the insurance company wants to conduct like a full investigation, which they

can often only get through litigation.

So more times than not, we're gonna actually put the case in court.

And what that means is we file an actual complaint with the court,

which is a pleading that names the parties that we think are potentially

responsible or did something wrong.

And we say in the complaint, you know, we talk about the injuries and what the

damages are and what we're looking for.

In New Jersey, we don't put a dollar amount that we're looking for.

There's a rule against that because in New York you are allowed to put that in

and then someone puts in, we're seeking 10 million, and then they get these

headlines and in the news that say, oh, fell on sidewalk suing for 10 million.

You know, it's just kind stupid.

So in New Jersey, We don't put dollar amounts in there that, that we're seeking.

But anyway, that gets the case started, and then once the case

has started in court, the complaint gets served on the parties.

And then the litigation starts, and then the parties are supposed to

file an answer to the complaint.

And then once they've answered the complaint, then discovery is

served on the parties, and discovery is basically written questions,

you know, what are your injuries?

What happened?

And then we ask written questions to the other side as well.

And then we also do demand for documents, which is, it's like a court caption

document that has a list of the documents that we're looking for in the case.

And then, you know, it's funny, in this episode we're talking about like

the litigation phase and an overview.

You could literally give a course on the litigation phase.

You could give an entire law school course on just one

aspect of the litigation phase.

So we're doing this at a super kind of overview way, and then the process starts

and the process can take anywhere from.

A year, three years, six years or more, the wheels of justice run

slow, but they do run, they do turn.

And with Covid it's made things even slower.

And this is all just the, the basic litigation phase.

And then you go through like this discovery part that we talked about.

And then depositions are often done where we'll take depositions of the

people, the contractors and and the people that are running the job.

And then they'll take the deposition of the plaintiff and then they'll

send the plaintiff for a medical exam.

And then we'll serve medical reports and then, We'll often get reports from experts

like engineers or safety officials.

And then will the insurance companies and these, these corporations

fight these cases very hard.

So often the documents that they're supposed to turn over and the questions

they're supposed to answer the first time, they won't actually answer until

we get several court orders and motions.

And that's all part of the wear down process where.

The insurance companies and the corporations with all this

money try to wear people down.

And then often they will insinuate that the plaintiff is a liar, a cheater,

a fraud, and they're faking it all.

They do it in almost every case.

They, they insinuate or suggest that the plaintiff is exaggerating their injuries

or that they had some injury before.

Often trying to trigger the worst in people.

The worst, you know.

Things that people think about.

People like, oh, you're a fraud, and you're like, this happens.

So if you do this and you get into the litigation process, they don't pay

money easily and not in these cases.

So you really need a lawyer that's experienced with this stuff that

has thick skin cuz they're gonna fight the cases really hard.

It's gonna take a long time and a long process, but in our experience,

it's usually been worth it.

People will come to us and if we don't accept their case, cuz sometimes we

don't accept a lot of the cases that we look at, we, we look at many, many

cases, but accept the small percentage.

But a lot of times we won't accept the case because the

injury is not not good enough.

And we always tell the client that that's good news because you don't

want your case accepted because the injury is good because there's nothing

more important than your health and your, and your life in that regard.

So it's a long process, but we find more often than not, it is worth it, you know?

There's never a guarantee in these cases.

There can never be a guarantee.

So like another little piece of device for this litigation phase, and it's a little

bit related to the intake process, is like if you go ever go to a lawyer and they

say, sign here, I guarantee we're gonna get you money, run and run far and run

quickly away from that lawyer because.

The truth is no lawyer and a third party contingency plaintiff's case

can ever guarantee a recovery.

We can only you, you can only manage the case.

You can work real hard on the case and do everything you know reasonably.

That you can to do good, but you can never guarantee a win.

You can never guarantee a recovery because there's like too many factors.

It depends on what judge you get.

Often, it depends on what jury you get.

It depends on the facts.

And even if you have like.

Great facts and great witnesses and great documents.

The law can change right in the middle of your case.

That can turn a great case into a bad case.

So the best can be done as we can manage it and try to position the

case for the best recovery possible.

But there's never really a guarantee in these cases.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing that, cuz there's so many different

variables when it comes to that and you know, nothing can be predicted.

It's just, you know, you can handle the case to the best under the evidence

that's there and the circumstances.

So thank you for sharing that.

Mark, any thoughts on this?

Yeah, Gary's right and I think I've said that after pretty

much everything he said, but.

The amount of times, you know, we've done an initial client meeting and

the client will ask like, you know, what do you think my case is worth?

They're like, are we gonna win?

I could probably count on half of one of my hands the amount of

times I've even given a range that I think the case is worth that an

initial meeting you just, like Jerry said, there's way too many factors.

You know, what the coverage is gonna be, what the liability issues are.

And Jerry said sometimes too, the law could change.

What do you mean the coverage mark?

What does that mean?

Yeah, so with coverage, we may have said this earlier on in one of these

episodes, and if we haven't, pretty much in talking to a younger attorney

that comes to work here, or sometimes even discussing with clients, there's

three main components to any personal injury case, which is liability.

Who did what wrong?

The damages, what are the injuries, and then what is the insurance coverage?

Because a lot of times there's policy limits.

You know, say you get rear-ended by somebody.

They're a drunk driver.

You need a fusion, and if they have a hundred thousand dollars insurance

policy, that's usually gonna be a limiting factor in your case, having a certain

policy that you need to work within.

So when I say policy, I'm talking about the insurance policy limits.

And when I'm talking about coverage, I'm talking about the insurance

policy limits that are available.

So that's always something that kind of gets, gets factored into to cases.

And I think early on, Jerry said that we could make a law school

class out of the litigation phase of these construction cases.

And he, he's absolutely right.

He kinda gave a very macro view, and I'm more kind of a big picture guy.

, you know, I'm, I'm gonna kind of jump in though, and, and, Be the micro

guy here because even sometimes the simple thing as filing a complaint

and getting the defendants to answer can be like pulling teeth.

And it happens more often than not with these construction cases.

In New Jersey, you've got 35 days to answer a complaint.

A, a lot of times, you know, general contractor or someone in the construction

industry will get served with one of these complaints and think, you know, maybe one,

they didn't do anything wrong, so they're not gonna let their insurance company.

Know about it, or two think that if they just ignore it, we'll we'll go away.

So there's steps that we can take through the court system to get them to try

and wake up and answer the complaint.

And sometimes they just, they just don't.

But that alone, that simple aspect of you file a complaint, you file a

pleading with the court looking for relief, and defendants file an answer.

That in and of itself can take months and months and litigation cycle after

litigation cycle, and you have to unfortunately get a judge involved

sometimes just for someone to file an answer to a simple complaint.

So, mark, you know, it seems like a really lengthy process, obviously.

I mean, is it, is it really worth it for a client to, you know, to file a case and

for it to go to litigation in New Jersey?

Dimple again, we, we've said there's, there's no guarantees

with anything, but based on our experience, yes, yes, it is worth it.

Again, you don't want to be one of those plaques on the wall of, look at this

great recovery we got, or this, you know, big jury verdict because that means

that you've been pretty badly injured.

But a lot of times when people get injured on these construction

sites, it's a bad injury.

It could be a fall from, you know, 40 feet or something that results in catastrophic

injuries and it's a life-changing event.

And in our society we don't have a time machine.

We can't rewind and go back and stop that thing from happening.

The best kind of solution our country has come up with and it's a lot better than.

I guess most of the world is to compensate that person for

what's been taken away from them.

So while they've had a life-changing injury, we talk about how it can be

a such a dog fight and a slog going through this litigation, the whole,

like good things come to those who wait again with no guarantees, but

the light at the end of the tunnel.

Oftentimes, if the injury warrants, it can be life-changing money that if

they didn't go through this process, it just, it just wouldn't happen.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing that.

I'm gonna ask Jerry similar, which is there's a lot they have to go

through in this process, right?

And it is a lengthy process.

Why is it worth it for them to go through that?

Because it's almost rehashing the pain that they went through, the family.

Why is it worth it?

Because you have dealt with so many cases and what's your experience been?

Well, It's worth it because like Mark said, if the injury's bad and all cases

are different, it's never a guarantee, but it can often be life changing money

and not money in the sense of, oh, you know, I'm gonna make a buck on this.

It's money in the sense of compensation, like just, it's kinda like.

When we were kids, you were playing stickball and you

broke the neighbor's window.

You know the responsible parent might march the kid

over to the neighbor's house.

And get the kid to admit I broke the window, I apologize for it.

It won't happen again.

And probably most importantly, I'm gonna pay for the window.

So when we talk about getting money in these cases and, and compensation,

it's really just paying for the window.

It's not like lottery money or, oh, now I got money to buy 10 windows.

No.

We've gotten hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars for people.

And I can say that in my career I have never seen a case where I

would, me personally, would ever trade the money for the injury ever.

You know, no matter how little money we got and how minor the injury

might have been or how severe the situation was, it's, it's like never.

The money's never worth it in the sense that you would trade

it, but it's always worth it.

Not always worth it, but it's, it's worth it to try if we accept the case.

The other kind thing on this, in answering your question, well

why is it worth and all that?

And it's true, it is like kind of can be like warfare on paper and it is a slog

and it is a lot of work, but it's not.

It's the lawyers that have to do that.

Not the client, the client's not in the office writing briefs or.

You know, filing motions or fighting with the other side, we're doing that.

So we have like a little saying sometimes like, you know, you focus on your

life, you focus on healing and getting better, and we'll focus on the case.

Cause sometimes people will come in, like if they're like a type A personality,

oh, we gotta do this, we gotta do that.

We try to tell them generally like, Hey, relax.

You know, we'll handle this for you.

Again, never, never guarantee that we'll win, but we handle all that stuff

and we're the ones that go through it.

So it can definitely be stressful for the clients in the sense of

just having to like think about it and knowing that the, they're gonna

like pry into their personal, like, oh, what's your medical history?

And they're gonna have to give a deposition.

But we always tell our clients it's most important in these

cases is to just tell the truth.

From the beginning through the case, and if you tell the truth early

on, We can then deal with the case accordingly and say, okay, it's worth it.

It's not worth it.

So that's really important because if you tell the truth, then we tell us that

because one of the more stressful things for the clients is to give depositions.

And we always tell them, just sit back and tell the truth and, and

then that way you don't have to think, well, what's the right answer?

What am I supposed to say?

Well, what you're supposed to say is what's the truth?

And if you tell the truth from the beginning, it makes

things generally a lot easier.

And we can tell if there's a case or not, and then go accordingly.

So the work is done by the lawyers.

And the other thing too is, well, why would we go through

this and why do all this?

Well, because of the injury.

And here's the biggie on this.

If you get in an accident in New Jersey, generally speaking, you only

have two years to file a lawsuit.

There's exceptions to that, you know, if you're under 18 and

there's bunch of exceptions.

So basically everything we're saying here is generally, so generally you.

So if you, if you have like a back injury and, and you feel, you know, it's not that

bad, it's getting a little worse and now two years has passed and then suddenly.

The disc blows out from an accident in your spine that happened over two years

ago and you didn't do anything about it.

You can't come back now and say, well, the injury got a

lot worse, so I'm gonna do it.

We've also had people, like, they'll come into the office for intakes and

they'll come with a family member, and the family member will be like, severely

injured and we'll ask him about it.

Are you okay?

Like what happened?

Yeah.

You know, it happened six years ago and I never did anything.

I thought it would get better and they're kicking themselves like.

Years down the road that they never did anything about it.

And the other part of it too, you say, well, is it worth it?

Is this like a moral thing to do?

Should I just turn the other cheek when I get harmed?

You know, I suppose that's a personal decision for people, but what they

should know is that in almost all cases that we handle, In the injury

area, defendants have insurance.

So they have an insurance company that will hire the lawyers and pay any

judgment or settlement under the terms of the policy within the policy limits.

So while the cases are brought against the individuals, In reality, the real party

in interest is almost always in these cases that we file an insurance company.

And the insurance companies generally we find they, they

want to collect the premiums.

You know those monthly payments where you have to pay your insurance every

month, but they don't want to pay claims and that's why they fight them

really hard and do all this stuff.

But again, it's definitely worth it to try if the lawyer will accept your case.

Yeah, it's worth it for sure.

Yeah, I, I've got a couple war stories I feel like I gotta, I gotta throw

in based off some of the things that, that you said and some of they're not,

I keep saying war stories makes it sound like there's a clash and it's

this horrible evil thing going on.

But some of them are, are good stories with, with happy endings.

I had a client come in and like we talked about liability damages.

What's the insurance coverage?

She came in, it was a rear end hit, so liability was great.

There were really bad property damage photos.

I think she was on like the parkway got hit from behind, hit into a guardrail.

The car was, it was like a can that had gotten stepped on, looked real bad.

There was good insurance coverage, but her main injury was the seatbelt

had cut the back of her head.

She said her neck was sore.

She went to the hospital for the neck.

But the main thing was that she had gotten a cut from the

seatbelt, and we've looked at it.

And we, this was one of those, we said, you know what, we'll investigate it.

We'll see if, if anything changes.

And she was, uh, I think she, she cleaned houses.

She was a, a tough, tough worker.

And down the road where we're kind of on the fence like,

are we gonna keep this case?

Are we gonna reject it?

We call her to check in.

And she scheduled for surgery on her neck from injuries to the disc from that crash.

So we ended up filing that complaint and that ended up being a policy

case, the case where we got the entire defendant's insurance policy.

That was one where we were like, are we gonna keep it?

Are we not?

So Jerry talks about the importance of if you're injured in a crash and you're

like, I don't know if I'm, if I'm hurt, if you don't do something within those

two years, you could be barred like this.

This woman could have been barred from getting just compensation for needing

surgery on her neck from a very bad traffic accident or traffic crash.

That's a turn of phrase there sometimes There's no such thing as an accident.

Like there's incidents, there's crashes.

You know, an accident means somebody made a mistake, someone

did, did something wrong.

They could have done differently.

So we try not to use that phrase too much.

With these things like we're talking about two years, you don't want to go to

the lawyer, alright, it's a week before two years now let me go to a lawyer.

The lawyer would like to have as much time as possible before

that two years to do the work.

So it's often hard to find a lawyer to take your case depending

on the facts and circumstances.

You know, some people say, oh, there's too many lawyers out there.

There may be a lot of lawyers, but not all lawyers are necessarily good lawyers and

there's a lot of demand for good lawyers, good, good injury lawyers, and you know,

one lawyer can only handle so many cases.

So if the lawyer can take your case, the better chance they'll take your

case the earlier you go to that, to that person so that they have as much

time as possible to look into everything and to consider your case file.

So you should go to the lawyer like.

You know, quickly after things happen.

Well, what's interesting is I think that a lot of times, like these clients are

influenced by, you know, their employers.

And their employers might be misleading them to say, oh no,

you're fine, or No, you don't need to file, like you don't need a lawyer.

And because they don't know better and they don't know the process,

they don't know they can be compensated for their injuries.

I think they're being influenced by other people.

I mean, do you see that a lot?

Yes, yes, absolutely.

There's.

A lot of times on construction sites especially, there's kind of like a

tough guy attitude and like I rub some dirt in it, like shake it off.

The amount of times that someone's had a catastrophic fall and they're really

injured and the foreman for the job will just have 'em hobble across the job site

and get into someone's truck and go to the hospital rather than call an ambulance.

I'd say that happens, you know, more, more often than not.

And then, yeah, I think there is a lot of pressure, especially too if there's,

you know, maybe a family connection or it's a friend that they were working for.

That's where I think we talked about, you'll get the, Hey, no,

we'll, we'll make this right.

We'll, we'll pay for it, just don't sue.

We'll pay the medical bills.

And then lo and behold, when those medical bills come due, which is oftentimes many

months later, be the guy that said he'd cover those bills has nowhere to be found.

So I think there is a lot of pressure to not bring a suit in some of these cases.

People might be concerned about what happens to their employment down the

road if they do, but I think, like we've talked about, a lot of times the people

who are kind of steering the injured worker one way might not have their

best interests in mind, which is how are they gonna provide for their family?

How are they gonna be able to continue working with their new reality, which

might be with the catastrophic injury?

Yeah, the employer doesn't wanna pay.

Workers' compensation is very expensive in the construction

industry, so some employers will just not pay it, try to get around it.

Have employees on the payroll or, well, they, a lot of 'em don't have a payroll,

not a traditional payroll anyway.

It's just cash at the end of the day.

And they won't tell if they even have workers' compensation insurance.

They won't tell them how many employees they have, cuz that's how they

determine how much it costs in part.

So we just got a, we heard back from one of the workers' compensation

lawyers that we work with on cases and that she reviewed the case

and she ended up not taking it.

And she notes in here that the worker's boss told the worker that his company did

not have workers' compensation insurance.

He offered to cover his medical bills and get him through until

he was able to return to work.

So what we often see is , they'll make good on that for a little while.

Maybe for a month, maybe two months if they're lucky.

And then after that, they'll just abandon the worker.

They'll stop paying, they'll walk away from him, and then they'll, but they

tell them that so that they don't go to a lawyer, Hey, I can take care of this.

And then the more time that passes that they don't go to a lawyer, the more

the employer can cover their tracks.

Start taking steps to not get held responsible in court.

So yeah, we do see that.

Thank you for sharing that.

And I think that's why it's important for clients to not wait

too long to actually look into this matter and speak to an attorney

or speak to a couple of law firms.

I think that's important.

So thank you guys so much.

See you guys next time.

Thanks.

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