Legal Question in Civil Rights Law in Illinois

Re: Term in which a civil case takes once filed

You have provided no information about your case or the amount at issue, so it is difficult to say. I can say, however, that the typical road to a trial would include certain written discovery (such as the production of documents and responses to interrogatories, which you may have alread experienced), and depositions of the key witnesses. After the close of fact-discovery, it is typical to proceed with "expert-discovery," i.e., discovery of each side's expert witnesses, although this too is frequently performed while "fact-discovery" is ongoing.

Thereafter, sometimes litigants try to win the case without going to trial by filing something called a motion for summary judgment -- which provides for one side or the other to win if there are no genuine issues of material facts in dispute and one side is otherwise entitled to win as a matter of law. If, however, there are still material factual issues in dispute, a trial will be necessary to resolve the matter.

That is the general framework. Also, even though it sounds like you will be sitting for your deposition later this month, you should not overlook taking the deposition of the other side of the case and other key witnesses -- along with serving various discovery and looking into the retention of an expert.

-- Kenneth J. Ashman; www.AshmanLawOffices.com

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Re: Term in which a civil case takes once filed

If you have been threatened, you should contact the police. At any rate, there are no guarantees how long a case may take to get to trial. It depends really on all the parties involved.