If you feel that the outcome of your personal injury claim is unjust, then you have every right to appeal the decision in a higher court.
When you are making an appeal for a personal injury case, or for any case for that matter, you are trying to impress upon your appeals court judges that the law wasn’t interpreted correctly in the first instance. If the judges agree with your lawyer’s arguments that the law wasn’t correctly interpreted before, then you will get the compensation that you are seeking and probably even more.
The first thing to do when you are trying to appeal a case is to get in touch with a lawyer who can handle appeals cases and has a good reputation. Your current lawyer may be worth using for your appeal, as they will be familiar with your case and has probably prepared a strong case for you, but you may chose to find a different personal injury attorney to handle you appeal.
Appeal cases prepared by lawyers need to be different from first time cases, in that you are not going to call witnesses all over again but prove a specific point—that the law was not followed correctly in the previous instance.
You will find that the appeals court is quite different from regular courts. The first thing that will strike you as different is that there is no jury present. You have to prove your case to only the appeal court judge. This might seem to be an easy thing to do. However, there will be more than one judge hearing any appeals case and you have to convince all of them. At the same time, the defendant will be busy trying to prove to them that the law had indeed been followed and that you have no grounds for an appeals case.
There are certain important things that can help you with your personal injury appeals case. Firstly, speak about any mistakes that had happened on the part of the defendant in the first case. Speak about their faults and if anything, even something inconsequential, has been proven wrong from what the defendant initially held, then it can help you in the case.
Speak about every aspect of the case to the personal injury lawyer handling your claim, even if you have spoken about all those points with your previous lawyer. Appeals lawyers have a better eye for detail and there are all chances that they will pick out some important points that can help you, points that your previous lawyer might have just glossed over. All such information must be given to your lawyer before he or she makes the appellate brief, an important document which the judges will usually study before the appeals case is underway.
If you would like to know more about making a Personal Injury claim, please visit our Making a Personal Injury Claim