When you file a legal case, it’s important that your lawyer knows exactly where to file it and how to proceed. Many cases have to be filed in a specific location – county, state, etc – so they cannot be started in another court system. Doing so can cause some significant problems and may even eliminate your chances to win the case.
For instance, there are sometimes statutes of limitations, or deadlines by which you have to have your case underway. New York has a statute of limitations for personal injury cases, which is three years.
Therefore, if you were injured and your case was filed in the wrong location, you could accidentally exceed that statute of limitations before you realized that your lawyer had made a mistake. They could then cancel the case in the wrong location and attempt to re-file in New York, but they may not be able to do so if they have already exceeded the statute of limitations. This would mean that it was too late to seek compensation, even though you had a winnable case.
What options do you have?
In a situation like this, though, you can see that it is certainly not your fault. You provided the proper information to your lawyer about where you were injured, the bills you had and why you wanted to seek compensation from the other party. Maybe they just made a simple paperwork error, maybe they didn’t understand the case, or maybe they confused your case with another one that they were handling. No matter how it happened, the fact that they made a mistake when filing is what prevented you from even having a chance to win your case.
This is why you may want to look into all of your legal options if you believe that your lawyer was negligent and that it’s a case of legal malpractice.