What Does The Defense Lawyer Do?
Michael Babboni
Personal Injury
When you are the injured party in a personal injury case, you are a single individual that is being represented by your personal injury lawyer in St. Petersburg seeking financial compensation. This is not a criminal case, but a civil one, since in most personal injury cases, it is not a criminal act that is being prosecuted, with a jail sentence for the other party.In this case, you are the plaintiff, and your lawyer is pursuing a lawsuit on your behalf. However, the other party also has representation, and although this is not a criminal case, the other lawyer is still referred to as the defense lawyer, and acts on behalf of the people you are suing for damages.
So what does a defense lawyer do in a civil suit for something like personal injury cases?
The Professional Responsibility
Unlike you, if you are the plaintiff, the defense lawyer is not necessarily representing a single individual. The defense lawyer may be acting on the interest of another person, an insurance company, if one is responsible for paying out damages, or even an entire business or corporation, if, for example, you are suing a shopping mall or some other facility for a slip and fall injury on their property.
Like your personal injury lawyer, the defense lawyer will be acting on the part of the other party to get to the bottom of what happened. Unlike your attorney, who uses this period, known as “discovery” to gauge the extent of your injury and what kind of financial impact this has on your life, the defense attorney will be working to come to the opposite conclusion.
In other words, it is the job of the defense attorney to research the accident and prove that your injuries are not as serious or crippling as you would have the court believe, and that the lawsuit you are arguing for is without merit and should not be paid out.
Settlement & Discovery
The defense lawyer will be doing his or her own research, consulting experts and trying to determine whether or not the arguments and evidence your lawyer will be presenting can be contested in court. It is also a fairly regular occurrence during this discovery period for the defense lawyer to approach you and your attorney in order to make an offer on an out of court settlement.
While you are under no obligation to accept the offer that is being made, both you and your personal injury lawyer may consider it for different reasons. The discovery period is usually when the strength of the case is determined based on the evidence or expert testimony that be potentially used at this time. If, for example, your own attorney finds that the evidence for your case may not be that compelling, they may urge you take the settlement amount, since it may be “better than nothing.”
On the other hand, it may turn out that the defense attorney realizes that the evidence you and your attorney are gathering is very strong. Strong enough, in fact, to guarantee an unfavorable result in court for the defense lawyer’s client. An offer may be made now simply to avoid a pointlessly lengthy court case with a foregone conclusion.
Protecting Yourself
The defense lawyer’s job is to portray your argument as weak and you yourself as unreliable, untrustworthy or merely uninformed and ignorant in front of the jury. You cannot expect the defense lawyer to be “nice” to you, even if that may be the initial approach a defense lawyer takes when approaching you. It is their job to beat you and your attorney in court.
This means that you should never talk to any experts, investigators or insurance/financial staff about the particulars of your case without your lawyer present, especially if these insurance people or investigators have been sent to act in cooperation with the defense lawyer.
It’s also important that you maintain absolute honesty about the true extent of your injuries. Some personal injury court cases have been completely destroyed in court because the plaintiff lied about their injuries and then, confident their deception had been believed, acted in a normal fashion, only to have investigators that were following them on the behalf of the defense lawyer produce surveillance videos of these so-called “seriously injured victims” working out on exercise machines.
Never undertake any action, or exaggerate your case such that it gives a defense lawyer an opening to crack open and ultimately defeat your case in court. Always consult with your own personal injury lawyer about your next action, and what you should be doing for own recovery and for the success of your case as you work your way towards your day in court. A defense lawyer can’t win the case if your argument is strong enough and justice is on your side.