What To Expect When Getting Started on Your Mesothelioma Claim

When a client comes to see us for a potential mesothelioma case, we immediately start an investigation of the claim. We need to find out the exposure history, the diagnosis, things like that. We have at the Lanier law firm an extensive staff and 2 or 3 full-time private investigators involved going back in town because these exposures frequently occurred 30, 40, 50 years ago. We have private investigators who can have their ways of finding out information about the exposures potential. And that’s the companies that were responsible for the exposure, where they existed, what they did, the type of procedures that they did that might have caused asbestos exposure. That process can take, you know, a few weeks initially, but we’re also always mindful of it if we have a client that comes in and has mesothelioma, we also want to be very mindful of their medical condition, their medical treatment, and so we usually try to move as quickly as we can in a matter of weeks to get the lawsuit filed because usually we’re gonna have to have the client give a deposition. That’s how we obtain for evidentiary purposes, for, in the future of trial, the exposure history. That’s one of the ways we prove up how the person was exposed asbestos is deposing the person and we usually try to do that very early on in the process so that they can then forget about the lawsuit, take care of themselves, take care of their treatment, focus on their own care, and let us worry about the lawsuit. Once the lawsuit is filed, discovery is a process by which the parties, the plaintiff and defendant have to exchange information, written discovery, paper discovery, exchange of documents, and then we have to take depositions of each parties’ experts and witnesses. That process can take anywhere from 6 months to a year, and then we try to get a trial setting as soon as possible. On the average, it can take anywhere from 1 year to 1 year and a half to actually get a case to trial.