Attorneys in Corpus Christi have become somewhat perplexed and indeed frustrated by the number of people who, when involved in an automobile accident do not bother to consult with lawyers and instead decide to then proceed with the lawsuit all by themselves. People seem to think that they have an open and shut case, and therefore, they naively proceed to oversee the progress of the case oftentimes with disastrous results.
There is a saying, which is very apt and insightful: “the lawyer who defends himself, has a fool for a client.”
Many people balk at the idea of hiring attorneys for an automobile related personal injury lawsuit, primarily because they are concerned about just how big a bite out of their compensation is their attorneys going to take. This fear is a perfectly justifiable one, given that people who have been victims of automobile accidents invariably face the extremely unpleasant situation of paying out significant amounts of money for medical bills for the likes of surgery, rehab and medication.
However, it should be noted that a personal injury lawsuit is an extremely challenging and complex issue to be debated, and even experienced personal injury attorneys struggle with it. If the experts can’t totally get their heads around the issue then how on earth will we merely mortals cope with it then?
What many amateur “lawyers” seek to overlook is that there is a major stumbling block that is the bane of any personal injury specialist attorney and that is: contributory negligence. Contributory negligence in its most extreme usage will automatically disqualify a victim from being able to legitimately claim damages for their injuries, if they are even partially responsible for the injuries.
Even when this strict rule was relaxed, it still posed a major issue for personal injury lawyers as they were forced to try and then properly argue and justify to what extent their client was responsible for an accident.
The issue here for the novice lawyer who is seeking to defend their own case is that this calculation and apportioning of blame/liability for the accident in dispute is far from a precise science and as such, it requires years of practical hands on experience to fairly apportion a decent estimate.
Regrettably, our legal system has not evolved to such an extent where there is now a clearly specified, fully tabulated and classified range of situations and definitions which are neatly defined with a numerical value attached. Therefore, it boils down to a final judgement call, and so during this process (which some have wryly compared to the divination conducted by the Roman priestesses) it is essential that only the most compelling evidence is presented.
An issue that attorneys have often raised during these proceedings is that there oftentimes, types of evidence which actually have a prejudicial effect on their overall case, either because they are too technical (and therefore will be liable to alienate the average jurist) or they have too high a degree of ambiguity so as to muddy the waters further.
