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Just like in a criminal case, everyone knows that ultimately, it's up to a jury to decide your personal injury claim. That's the crown jewel of our legal system: letting a jury of our peers decide if we're right or wrong. But before this happens, the judge must decide if the parties to the litigation have met their "threshold" by presenting enough evidence to even warrant assembling a jury in the first place.
You see, the legal system doesn't want to waste a jury's time by submitting baseless, frivolous claims to them. Further, if there's no or very little evidence that the plaintiff suffered any harm from the defendant's conduct, why bother 12 potential jurors with the case?
To prevent this from happening, if they believe the other party lacks sufficient evidence to successfully proceed, either party can file a "motion for summary judgment" and ask the court to rule that the case doesn't need to go to the jury. For every harm the plaintiff alleges ("claims") or each argument the defendant wants to allege ("defenses"), they must offer evidence. When they don't, the judge can toss out their claims entirely. Almost always, however, it's the defendant asking the judge to dismiss the plaintiff's claims.
Questions Answered on This Page:
As we discuss throughout these "explaining the basics" pages, lawsuits are not won on mere allegations, but on evidence. Defendants in personal injury cases often file what's termed a no-evidence motion for summary judgment, which attacks your claims for supposedly lacking any evidence.
These motions are intended to clean out a court's schedule of any claims that cannot prove that there's a reason for the jury to rule in their favor. The plaintiff must then show, through the record of evidence already developed by the parties, that there is in fact some evidence that his claims are right.
Without getting too thick into the weeds on this, there must be evidence to corroborate each and every element of your claim. Laws and common law causes of action have elements. "Elements" are like ingredients in food---if you don't have jelly in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it's not a PB&J. In order to keep a judge from throwing your case out for lack of evidence, your attorney will need to be able to point to actual evidence for each element. For example, in a negligence case, you must be able to show that:
This may strike you as obvious. You don't have to be some great legal expert to guess that no court of law will hear a case about friends who are upset with each other over sports or politics. But situations arise where courts have to grapple with whether the law even allows you to file a lawsuit, even if you have what might seem to be a valid claim.
A simple example: legislatures and courts change the law, and what new law means is often open to interpretation. When this happens, courts have to examine what the new law even means. Lawyers often make a sport out of arguing over words in laws, disputing (always for their client's advantage) whether, say, "employee" also means "intern" in a workplace protection law. Courts then ask a court to step in and make a decision. So, your attorney might be faced with a defendant not disputing that something bad happened to you, but whether there's even a valid cause of action you can sue under.
Regardless, your attorney will need to be more than good in the courtroom. He'll need to work for months before your case even gets close to trial securing the evidence and researching the law to keep your case from getting tossed out entirely. Don't risk your case, whatever the amounts at stake, on an attorney without the track record of holding negligent parties accountable. Call Grossman Law Offices today at (855) 326-0000.
Other articles about personal injury cases that may be helpful:
An overview of “vicarious liability” under Texas law: In the normal personal injury scenario, person A acts negligently and injures person B. Under those circumstances, it’s very clear who the wrongdoer is, and the victim has a very straightforward claim against the wrongdoer and only the wrongdoer. But not every accident is so straight-forward. In…
How Negligent Supervision Works Under Texas Law. If you’ve been hurt by someone while they were on the job, that employee–much less his employer–is not automatically required by law to pay you for your injuries. While many simply assume that employers are generally responsible for what their employees do, this isn’t necessarily so. Perhaps in…
How Case Elements Work Under Texas Law: Every specific type of case (e.g. car accident case, work injury case, medical malpractice case) is made up of individual components called “elements.” In this article, we’re going to explain what case elements are. But to be frank, explaining what elements are is actually really tricky. It’s a…
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