If you’ve been the unfortunate victim of a shooting incident in Miami you may have considered the possibility of bringing a lawsuit. While you may be vaguely familiar with how a lawsuit works, you will likely not be familiar with the intricacies of a shooting lawsuit. If you’re considering bringing a shooting lawsuit, you should know that the lawsuit will be broken up into these parts:
Filing the shooting lawsuit
The first step in the lawsuit process will be to file the actual shooting lawsuit. A lawsuit is just a piece of paper that sets out the allegations in the case. In a shooting lawsuit, the paperwork will allege that the defendant failed to meet its standard of care, resulting in your injuries. The specifics of the allegations will depend on what the Defendant knew or should have known at the time, and the ways in which the Defendant failed to act to keep you safe. Once this paper is filed in court and served on the Defendant the lawsuit has officially started.
Discovery
After the shooting lawsuit is filed, the discovery process begins. Discovery is what lawyers call the process used to gather information about the lawsuit that may be in the possession of the parties or other entities. In Florida this process includes requests for production, interrogatories, requests for admissions, and depositions. This process is governed by the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure. It is during this process that the lawyers can information that may otherwise not been available before the shooting lawsuit was filed. Things that are commonly obtained during this process include: surveillance video of the incident, internal policies and procedures of the Defendant, and admissions of fact regarding the incident.
Mediation
Mediation is a step of the process where the parties agree to meet and see if they can resolve the issues in the lawsuit without the need for a trial. A mediator will usually be chosen by all the parties in order to facilitate this process. A mediator is simply a neutral person who is trained in negotiation whose job is to facilitate the negotiations among the parties to see if a resolution can be reached. Mediation is strictly confidential, and nothing that is said during the mediation can be used at trial.
Trial
Trial is the culmination of the shooting lawsuit. If the parties cannot come to an agreement before trial as to who is at fault and how much money should be given to the person bringing the shooting lawsuit, the parties will take the case to trial. Trial in Florida is almost always done before a jury. The jury is a pool of people from the community chosen by the parties to decide issues such as who is at fault, and if the Defendant is at fault how much money should be awarded to the victim of the shooting. Most shooting lawsuits resolve before getting to this point.
Appeal
Regardless of who wins at trial there will usually be an appeal. An appeal is a way for the losing side to take the case up to a higher court and try to get a new trial. Unless someone made a serious mistake during the trial, appeals typically fail. But an appeal can take a year or more to resolve, and in the meantime you will not see any compensation if you won at trial.
