A Personal Injury Case Isn’t Valid Forever
Brian O Sutter
Personal Injury
With the American legal system, the clock is “always ticking.” There’s a limited number of judges, a limited number of courts, and only so many days within a year when legal business can be conducted and resolved. That means that the court always has to pick and choose the times and “battles” that are going to be waged and try to do it as quickly as possible because there will always be another case, another dispute that needs to be settled.This is especially true when it comes to minor breaches of law, such as disputing a traffic ticket, which can be resolved in a few minutes, and don’t even require the presence of a jury. However, for major cases, such as a lawsuit, the trial itself can last days, weeks, even years, depending on the severity. In these cases, the trial will take however long it takes for attorneys and a jury to reach a resolution, but where the clock ticks in these cases is how much time is allowed to pass before a case goes to court.
This is called that statute of limitations, and it varies a lot from one legal situation to the next.
Capital Crime Will Always Have Its Day
The one area where there is no statute of limitations is, for example, in the most severe criminal acts of all, such as murder. Even if a murder goes unsolved for 50 or more years, if new forensic technology and the reopening of a “cold case” suddenly lead to new evidence that finally implicates a perpetrator, that case can still go to court. This does mean that even if the murderer is now 50 years older, retired, and managed to not commit any other criminal acts that person can still be tried and, if found guilty, still go to jail to serve out a sentence.
Criminal law takes murder very seriously and does not believe that any amount of time is “sufficient” to ignore an act of murder and say the court no longer has an interest in seeing justice be done. But that’s at one extreme. The other is when it comes to something that may not be a criminal act, but may have impacted on another person’s rights, such as a slip and fall in a public area, like a shopping mall.
Exploitation Can Take Time
If you get injured in a car accident, or through a slip and fall in a mall, or even bitten by a dog, or experience a boating accident, you’ll need an accident attorney to help you navigate a personal injury case in court. But you will only have the ability to do this within four years of the time of the injury.
For most people, this isn’t going to be an issue at all. Many who are injured and lose their jobs, or are caught in medical payments for treatment will seek out a personal injury lawyer right away to quickly get the wheels in motion. The majority of the time, injured people who realize someone else was responsible for their accident will want to get that blame attributed, recognized and resolved by a court of law, so they can get on with their lives.
But this is not always the case. Sometimes, as with a traumatic brain injury, the full extent of the injury may not be known right away. It may take months—maybe even years—before brain injury symptoms fully manifest. The court understands situations like this, which is why a four year time limit—from the period of injury—has been embedded as a statute of limitations.
Beyond that, there’s always a danger that there may be some fraud involved. After all, for someone to suddenly inherit a vast fortune from a distant relative, have that fortune be publicly broadcast, and then receive notice of being sued just days later for a whiplash lawsuit involving an accident that occurred 10 years ago is extremely suspicious. If a person was injured so long ago, why wait a decade—in this example—before finally going to court for compensation?
This is one of many reasons why the statute of limitations exists, and why you should resolve a personal injury case with an experienced personal injury lawyer as soon as you think you need the help. Don’t wait on it.