Legal Question in Personal Injury in Virginia

Re: running out of time

The insurance carrier for the one who is allegedly liable obviously knows you're "behind the eight ball", so to speak and, apparently, intends to take full advantage of it.

You need to engage the services of local counsel in the area where you live who has some experience with these kinds of claims(personal injury-tort). The local bar association may be able to give you a referral. Call then ASAP.

You must now move with all deliberate speed as it would appear from your fact recitation that the two year statute of limitations which presumably applies to your claim is about to expire. (A Motion For Judgment must be filed in your behalf before this happens or you will irretrievably lose your claim.)

Re: running out of time

I see that you are quite far away from both me

and Michael Henderson. However, you need to

file a lawsuit IMMEDIATELY. It is probably too

late for you to get a lawyer because lawyers are

busy and do not like to take cases at the last

minute.

You should file ANYTHING in court, if it is

truthful, even if not pretty.

Once you file, the clock stops running.

If there are problems with your case, the other

side will point it out, and you will have a

chance to rewrite the lawsuit later.

You should get a copy of a sample lawsuit and

simply do your best.

THEN go out and look for a lawyer to clean it up

and amend it and handle your case.

What you might want to do is the following:

FILE the lawsuit officially but tell the clerk

that you do NOT want to have it served yet.

One law firm I worked for used to do that

routinely. They would file the lawsuit, and then

they would negotiate and try to work things out

with the insurance company. Only if things didn't work out would they actually "serve" the

lawsuit on the defendant. "Serving" the defendant gets the lawsuit started for real.

The reason for doing this is that it makes it

much easier for another attorney to come along

and AMEND the lawsuit (rewrite it) if it has not

yet been officially served.

But WARNING: Don't wait too long to have it

served. You have one year to get service, and

then your lawsuit is thrown out. I would not

wait more than 4 months, because may have to

make multiple attempts to FIND The defendant to

get him served.

NOTE that you sue the person who hit you, NOT

the insurance company. The insurance company

stands behind the driver who hit you.