How Long Can I Wait to File a Car Accident?

Hi. I’m Roger Ghai and I wanted to talk today a little bit about why you should not wait to the last moment to file your case or contact an attorney about your case. Generally speaking, in the state of Georgia, we have two years on a personal injury case to actually file the lawsuit and get the defendant served within that time period. If for example, you file the lawsuit within that two-year time period but you don’t get the defendant served with a copy of that lawsuit until days later or weeks later, your claim could be barred on that basis alone.
Now, if it’s a more simple case such as an automobile accident case or that type of a case and you’re coming into your lawyer’s office hopefully not at the last moment but at least 60, 90 days beforehand then the lawyer is more likely to go ahead and take the case. I have a rule in my office which is this: if it’s a typical car accident or truck accident case, if we’re within the six month period of the statute coming up and in Georgia, like I said, we’ve got two years to file the case and serve the defendant, but if we’re within that six-month period, I usually won’t take the case.
I won’t take it for a few reasons. Number one: my experience has been that when we take those cases, we might file the case really quickly, okay but we might not be able to get the defendant served really quickly and that’s a problem. A lot of times in these cases, after a year or so has passed or six months has passed, I even have a case right now where we filed the case within four months and we have not been able to find where the defendant was.
It took us a long long time and now we have found where the defendant was. Now the defendant is not cooperating with the insurance company which is causing another legal problem but generally, if you wait within that six-month period, it could take us three months or four months or five months or six months to actually find that person who caused this negligence, that negligent car accident case, and serve them with the copy.
Another scenario is this: Look, I had a call just maybe about a month ago and it was a fantastic case. It was a case where this woman’s husband, and I don’t mean to say fantastic in the sense of great. We were going to make a lot of money on it but it was a fantastic case in the sense of we would have been able to prove liability, and the damages for this client were substantial. Her husband had passed away because the doctor had not properly done the testing to determine that he was a candidate for surgery so they didn’t do the surgery.
They didn’t find out in time and we would have been able to prove liability at trial. He ended up passing away but problem was this, the client, and she was not a young lady. She was in her late 70s and she called me up on a Friday afternoon and the statute was going to come in about two more weeks. Now a lot of times when were handling those medical malpractice cases, it takes time for us to get the records.
Sometimes those medical records are thousands of pages and more over than that, once the lawyer does get those medical records, we have to have those records independently reviewed by an expert to say, “Yes, the doctor in the case breached the standard of care,” and that’s the reason that we’re filing a lawsuit. All that is a very time-consuming process so you don’t want to be in a situation where this poor lady was where I had to tell her, “I’m sorry ma’am but I cannot take the case because you’ve waited too long.” If you have questions about whether you should contact a lawyer before your case, the statute expires, please call my office at 770-792-1000.