Maryland Car Accident Lawyer BlogHOW TO PREPARE FOR YOUR DISCOVERY MEETING WITH YOUR LAWYER (DISTRICT COURT VERSION)
Every case, whether a circuit court or district court, has a phase of discovery. In the district court, this simply involves the exchange of written questions, known as interrogatories. In the circuit court, this involves more interrogatories, plus some document requests, and likely depositions.
We’re going to cover what to expect in the discovery process for district court in this article. In the district court, unless you are proceeding by way of small claims (case limited to $5,000.00 recovery), each side is permitted to ask the other side up to 15 written questions (interrogatories). There is not specific required form, so we don’t always know what is going to be asked of us. But, most lawyers tend to use the same interrogatories over and over again, so we can tell you the questions that GEICO lawyers usually ask, the questions that State Farm lawyers usually ask, and so on. (For examples, click on these links: Allstate IROG (04-08-18), SF IROG (04-08-18))
Your lawyer will get these questions, and will usually do a first draft of the answers based on the intake with you, and a review of the file (including the police report, medical records, and other documents). Then, the lawyer will usually ask you to fill in the blanks.
With so many accidents caused by distracted driving, it’s a fair bet that, in any given accident, the negligent driver was on a handheld phone or handling e-mail or text messages while driving. In many cases, that fact is not important: if the defendant admits liability, or if liability is clear (for example, the garden variety rear-end collision).