At the law office of Law Offices of Richard S. Binko, we prepare every single case as if it’s going to trial. Statistically, most will settle. Statistically, most will end up being resolved in a situation where we realize the limitations we have. An example would be a serious injury where there’s very limited insurance coverage. So cases like that end up being settled.
However, it’s vital we start preparing every case like it’s going to be tried, and do all the little things that are important quickly — like go out and get pictures of the cars that were involved in a motor vehicle crash. Not just get one or two photos on a cell phone, either. We want to get every angle of the car, we want to get every side of the car, we want to get every detail of the car. The extra photos provided might be the ones at the time of trial you’re going to present as evidence.
We do that extra hard work because we just don’t know which of the cases we’re going to end up having to try and it’s a good practice. It’s worked well over the decades to overwork each file to not only go out and get the photographs but to go and get the client’s records. They may tell us they have not had an accident where they hurt their back, but they didn’t realize that, for example, 15 years ago they actually did hurt themselves while they were moving furniture or something.
However, because it wasn’t anything that plagued them, and it was a one or two-time visit to their doctor, they have forgotten. We will go and get all their patient records and we will tell the clients what we found. They may not have even remembered; most people aren’t dishonest — what happens is if it’s very minor they’ve completely forgotten about it. If they’re asked a question at trial like, “did you ever go to a doctor and make a complaint for a back problem?” and they said “no” it would be devastating if they had 15 years ago, and we just didn’t do the work to uncover it.
So we’re very very thorough because we don’t leave anything to chance; we want to outwork the defense so we have an advantage. We can outwork them before the lawsuit is filed, because they won’t know there’s a case until it’s sued.
There’s a lot of things that we need to do before we sue the case. It’s critical that we have the lead time and it’s important that people retain us early– while we can still get a skid mark picture, while we can still measure that skidmark, while we can still see both vehicles at the impound lot.
All of these things will change quickly in addition to the MV 104a that you have to file with the state of New York within 10 days and the no-fault forms that have to be done within 30 days. Those are all things that allow us to really laser focus our representation and to do all the investigative digging.