Your lawyer’s office should take care of the actual filing of the lawsuit in court. The venue of where the lawsuit will be filed will be dictated by the laws of your state.
In Washington, you will typically file your case in the county where your accident happened, or in the county where one or both of the parties involved lives. If you are filing suit against a business or corporation, then the venue can occur in the county where the company does business. Your lawyer can explain to you how these rules affect your case.
A lawsuit formally starts when you file a written complaint with the court. This complaint describes the facts of the case, your injuries and why the person you are suing is responsible for your injuries. It then separately lists each “cause of action,” which is a reason for suing.
The complaint ends with a request for financial compensation for the injuries you have listed. This can be quite detailed, depending on your state’s requirements, but it always contains enough information to inform the other parties why they are being sued.
Along with the complaint, your lawyer will also file a summons, a document that must be personally served on the defendants. The summons explains how the defendant should respond to the complaint and gives a deadline to do so. As a courtesy, your lawyer may send a copy of the complaint to the defendant’s insurance company.
After the complaint is filed, your lawyer may have to specify whether you prefer a jury trial or a “bench trial.” A bench trial is one that is conducted before a judge and not a jury. The judge decides the case. Most of the time the defendant’s lawyer will request a jury. The conventional wisdom is that a jury may be more conservative on damages then compared with a judge. A jury will also be more influenced by matters outside the law, whereas a judge is trained to disregard irrelevant evidence.
You and your lawyer should have agreed on this ahead of time. In a jury trial, a group of randomly selected citizens from the area decides the case while the judge acts as a referee and resolves legal issues involved in the case. By contrast, a bench trial involves a judge deciding the entire case (issues of fact and legal issues). Bench trials are less common than jury trials. If your lawyer recommends one, he or she should be able to explain why.
