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File suit early? Only if you want to win these types of maritime Jones Act cases.

The last thing I want to talk to you about is when people should get to the courthouse as quickly as possible. There are some cases where filing suit has very big advantages and you want to do it earlier rather than later in these types of cases.

Now there are certain cases where the company has control of all the documents that are important and critical to winning the case. Unfortunately this is a lot of cases. But if you know that there are documents out there that were filled out right after your accident, if you know that there is equipment that was not working right or that needed to be repaired and that caused your accident, a lot of times getting to a lawyer quickly is very important so that that evidence can be preserved or those documents can be saved.

In addition to preserving evidence, that includes taking photographs of damaged areas, that includes saving documents like I talked about, it includes making sure that any equipment that was not working right, that tests are done to it before it all gets fixed. In addition to doing all that, one very important reason to file suit early is to control your medical treatment. Now people will say you know what, they are paying for my doctor, I am just going to keep going to my doctor. Well some times they will stop paying when the doctor recommends a surgery and we have a lot of clients who come in to us and they say, the doctor treated me for a while, he did some tests, he is now talking about doing surgery and the company is refusing to pay for it. Now the advantage to already having an attorney at that point is that we can run over to the courthouse, we can run over to the judge with motions and we can make them pay for that surgery some times. That gets your treatment done quicker, it gets you the medical treatment you need. A lot of times people who do not have attorneys have to come in, they have to file their suit, they have to wait three to six months before the court can set up a hearing on that surgery issue. So some times if you do have as serious medical case, it is best to have your suit filed so that you always have the ability to bring the company to court right away if they start cutting off your medicals.

Now a couple more points I want to make about filing suit. Now one obvious point is you are going to get your case resolved quicker the sooner you file suit. So some times it is important. If it is important to you to get the case resolved quicker, a lot of times filing suit does help you because you are going to have to do certain things during the suit that take time, depositions have to be taken and you cannot resolve your case usually until all that work is done. So if you want to get that done earlier, it is going to mean that you get your case resolved quicker.

The final point I want to make about filing your suit earlier is that it does give the company less time to get videotape on you, to control your medicals, to build their case by speaking to witnesses. Generally speaking, the longer a case goes on or the longer a claim goes on, the more it favors the company. You want to preserve the evidence as quick as you can in certain cases, you want to control the medicals as quick as you can in certain cases, and in a lot of cases you want to get in and get out of the courthouse and move on with your life. That is why some times it is best to file suit early.

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