If you live in BC, you live in a province where the personal injury system is a tort system. What this means is if you suffer harms and/or losses as a consequence of the negligence of another person, you must sue that person for compensation.
Starting a lawsuit is simply a matter of filing paperwork in a BC court.
Since your case as set out above is an injury case, you can probably get a free consultation with a lawyer. Take advantage of this and learn what you can about your case. You may even want to hire the lawyer.
If you get a free consultation with a lawyer so you can get some legal advice, you should be under no obligation to hire the lawyer. There’s no guarantee the lawyer will take on your case either.
Moving forward, you file your injury case in a BC court. Before filing though, you need to assess how much your claim is worth.
Any claim up to $25K belongs in small claims court; otherwise take your lawsuit to BC Supreme Court.
Either you take your paperwork to the court registry or your lawyer will get it filed. It requires a Court stamp indicating it’s been registered. Then you must serve your filed lawsuit documents on the parties you’re suing.
You can retain people called process servers who make a living personally serving people with court-filed pleadings.
Serving an individual is a matter of handing them a copy of your court-filed lawsuit documents.
If a defendant in your case is a partnership or corporation, you can send a filed copy by registered mail. This counts as service.
Each person you serve is a defendant of your personal injury lawsuit. Each defendant must file what is called a Statement of Defence.
A Statement of Defence is exactly what the name implies – a statement or statements setting out the defence or defences that will be advanced by that particular defendant(s). A Statement of Defence, is filed in the same court registry as the Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim filed by the injured person. Speaking of injured person; a person who commences a lawsuit is called the plaintiff. The person defending, is called a defendant.
If the defendants don’t bother to file a defence, you can pursue default judgment. If you succeed getting default judgment, then you simply need to have your claim assessed and then you lodge your judgment in court and pursue collecting on your judgment.
Usually you won’t get a default judgment. Once you receive a statement of defence, your lawsuit is off to the races. The exact steps from this point forward depends on which court you filed your claim.
Although starting a lawsuit isn’t difficult, it’s important you claim your harms and losses properly. Therefore, if you can get legal advice and representation. At the very least take the free consultation offers and learn as much as you can.
Some lawyers won’t take a Small Claims case on; others will. Either way the personal injury standard these days is that the lawyer’s legal fees are a portion of the amount of compensation the lawyer obtains.
We are Abbotsford lawyers since 1982. Since that time Gordon Dykstra has been a car accident lawyer representing injured people throughout BC.
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