What Happens the Day Your Case is Set for Trial: Chicago Personal Injury Attorney

Barry Doyle Personal Injury Attorney barry@fightingforwhatsright.com 312-766-4875 www.fightingforwhatsright.com The day your case is actually set for trial, you go to the courthouse and you tell the judge, “Judge, we're ready for trial.” At that point, the judge typically will ask you, “Have you guys talked about settling the case?” And sometimes this is a really good opportunity to get a case settled. Settling on the courthouse steps is a cliché, it's a cliché for a reason, and that's because a lot of cases get settled that first day when you're assigned out to trial. At that point, the insurance company has had a chance to thoroughly review everything that's gone on, they've gotten up-to-date reports and assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of the case, and there's no longer any time for delay in terms of trying to get the case resolved. So the case has gotten the focused attention of defense lawyers, it's gotten the focused attention of people from the insurance company, and you have a judge who's there who may be looking at a case that may last three or four days, or may last four or five weeks. And the judge would like to see if the case can get resolved somewhere short of going to trial. Everybody is sort of seeing the light as to the wisdom of settling the case at that point. So each attorney then updates the judge on what discussions have taken place and where you are? What happens? Typically, the judge will bring the lawyers into chambers, which is his office in back of the actual courtroom, and sit down and have that discussion. It's an off-the-record discussion, and the judge is really acting as a mediator, trying to get people to find this middle ground. If the case isn't able to get settled, good judges won't take that into consideration at all in terms of the rulings they make going forward. But one thing you have to keep in mind is that most judges really aren't familiar with the nitty gritty details of your case, so one of the things that you do when you sit down is you really tell the judge, “This is what my case is about, this is what I've got.” You're being a fairly strong advocate for what your position is, and obviously the defense is gonna be an advocate for what their position is, that's the nature of the beast, this is what we do. But the judge gets a real good sense right off the bat for who's really ready for trial, who has a strong hand, and the judge works on trying to help parties find a middle ground. And a lot of times the judge's recommendation that a case should be settled for a certain amount of money carries a lot of weight. It's certainly information that I would convey to my client so the client can make an informed decision about whether or not they wanna settle the case. It's also something that carries a lot of weight with the people from the insurance company. If a case can't get settled, is there anything else that can be done before selecting a jury? A big part of what you do to prepare a case for trial is doing something that's called motions in limine, which is a fancy way for saying it's a pre-trial motion. What these motions are, are motions where you ask the judge to exclude certain items of evidence that you think the other side shouldn't be allowed to offer. Part of my preparation for getting ready for trial is I try to figure out what sort of motions am I likely to see coming in from the defense, and actually have ... Sometimes I have written responses to their motions before I actually see the motion, because what they're going to be filing is kind of predictable based on how the case has developed to that point. But those are motions that sometimes are frairly detailed, sometimes they're really just a paragraph long, it's not gonna be terribly controversial. But you ask the judge to make these rulings on keeping evidence in or keeping evidence out, depending on which side of the fence you're on. And the judge, before the jury is picked, a lot of times will make rulings on those. Sometimes they'll reserve them to see how the case develops, and then as those issues start to present themselves, then the judge will actually make rulings. But to help parties really give good opening statements, to help parties really make good decisions about settling cases, judges tend to make rulings on these pre-trial motions before jury selection ever begins. So it's a really, really important part of the case. It's very technical, it's very fact-specific to what goes on, but it's a big part of the work that we do to make sure that our clients are effectively represented at trial. Barry Doyle Personal Injury Attorney barry@fightingforwhatsright.com 312-766-4875 www.fightingforwhatsright.com

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