 Litigation & Appeals
 In addition to claims involving legal malpractice and lawyer misconduct, the lawyers of Jones, Jensen & Harris have considerable experience representing both plaintiffs and defendants in a wide range of litigation matters, including personal injury, wrongful death, fraud, contracts, real estate, business, and other tort and commercial litigation. This includes every aspect of the litigation process, from filing suit through trial and, if necessary, appeals.
If you come to us with a potential claim, we will review and investigate the facts at the beginning. In any dispute, “knowledge is power,” so we will learn the facts of the case before filing suit. Sometimes, a well-crafted demand to the potential defendant can avoid the need for a lawsuit altogether, as it may lead to pre-suit negotiations that result in a settlement acceptable to the client. If the defendant does not want to resolve the case that way and wishes to go to court, then we are prepared to litigate.
Once a lawsuit is filed, the parties under Georgia law are given a period of time (typically six months, and often longer than that) to exchange information. This process is called “discovery” and includes both an exchange of relevant documents and the opportunity to take depositions of the parties and any other potential witnesses. From the client’s perspective, this period can be frustrating because there is a natural desire to get to trial as quickly as possible. The discovery period, however, sometimes convinces the defendant, and just as importantly the defendant’s lawyer (and likely the defendant’s insurance company), that the plaintiff’s case has merit, making it more likely that the case may settle without going to trial.
Defendants more often than not will file a motion for summary judgment, which is a way to ask the judge to, in effect, throw out the case before it ever goes to trial in front of a jury. The legal basis of such motions is that the defendant tries to convince the court that the plaintiff cannot prove at least one of the elements of the claim, so the defendant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The process of briefing and arguing motions like this further delays a trial, but as with discovery, if the plaintiff defeats a motion for summary judgment, the defendant sometimes will be more inclined to engage in meaningful settlement negotiations.
At all stages of a case, if the defendant makes what we consider a reasonable and substantial settlement offer, we advise clients if we think the defendant’s offer is preferable to trying the case, as may be the situation if the offer is more than we are likely to recover at trial. Ultimately, it is the client’s decision whether or not to settle.
It is not unusual at some stage of litigation (most commonly, after trial) for the case to be appealed. This happens after the trial judge has made a ruling that one of the parties disagrees with. The ruling may be a judgment after the jury returns a verdict, or it may be some preliminary order that the losing side does not accept. Either way, the case is then taken from the jurisdiction of the trial court and goes to the Court of Appeals (or in a few instances, the Georgia Supreme Court). These two courts are collectively known as appellate courts, and their function is to rule upon, and if necessary to correct, legal issues or decisions by the trial judge. The appellate courts are concerned only with purely legal questions, and so they do not resolve disputed factual disputes (that is the role of the trier of fact, which is usually the jury). The lawyers of Jones, Jensen & Harris take pride in their experienced appellate advocacy.
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