Hello. I’m Roger Ghai, and I practice in the area of injury law, handling cases all over the Metro Atlanta area. Sometimes I do get questions from clients about what happens if the case proceeds to trial and they lose their case.
First of all, you usually have a right to appeal a case, but there has to be a good legal justification that there’s error, either on the trial court’s part that there was a wrong ruling, or maybe there was some evidence that was excluded that you could have, but for that evidence that was excluded, you and the jury had heard it, you would have been able to win your case. Or maybe the defense counsel said something that they shouldn’t have said during the course of the trial. Maybe there was information that, legally, the jury was not entitled to know during the course of a trial. An example that would be, for example, the jury is not entitled to know that the defendant has insurance or how much insurance they have.
So if there’s any reference during the course of a trial to how much insurance the driver has or doesn’t have, or even, for that matter, how much the client himself or herself has, that would be a reason to move for a new trial. So there could be just different reasons that your case needs to be appealed. In the majority of cases, there is no error, and so if you lose a case, more likely than not, the decision of the jury will be respected by the court of appeals or the state supreme court.
But if you do have a question and a serious doubt as to whether your case should be appealed or not, please call my office at (770) 792-1000.