At some point during their case, nearly every victim of a serious personal injury will ask their lawyer why the case is taking so long. Most catastrophic injury cases – even if the plaintiff’s attorney prepares it expeditiously – will take at least two years before trial or settlement. If the death or injury was caused by medical malpractice or a defective product, the client should anticipate a wait of at least three years before the case is resolved. There are two sources of inevitable delay in bringing a serious personal injury case to trial: (1) the time required for thorough case preparation; and (2) timelines imposed by the Massachusetts judicial system.

A simple case could theoretically be prepared for trial in six months. Once the Complaint is served on the defendant, the defendant has twenty days to respond. Responses to document requests are due within thirty days of receipt, and answers to interrogatories within forty-five days of receipt. Once documents and interrogatory answers have been received, plaintiff’s counsel, armed with the preliminary information, can schedule depositions at any time. In the real litigation world, however, even the basics take much longer. Typically, if the defendant is insured, it will take some time before defense counsel is assigned by the insurance company.

Defense counsel’s first official act is usually to ask plaintiff’s counsel for a thirty day extension to file an answer. The request is customarily granted. Extensions of time to respond to document requests and interrogatories are routinely granted by both sides. While lawyers may over-rely on the expected courtesies of extensions, the extra time is sometimes necessary to gather the information required to fully respond. Depositions are often rescheduled one or more times before they take place. Experts, involved in all medical malpractice and product liability cases, are best fully involved after the facts have been thoroughly developed.

The primary determinant of how long cases will take in the Massachusetts courts, are the “Time Standards.” These court rules govern the presumptive maximum time from case filing to trial (most cases take somewhat longer to reach trial than the maximum time standard). The standards categorize cases into three tracks, “fast (F),” “Average (A),” and “Accelerated (X).” Simple personal injury cases such as motor vehicle and slip and fall cases, regardless of the seriousness of the injuries are in the “F” track, while medical malpractice, other professional malpractice, wrongful death and products liability cases are placed in the “A” track. The maximum time from filing of the Complaint to trial is supposed to be twenty-two months for “F” track, and thirty-six months for “A” track cases.

While a large majority of cases settle before trial, serious cases do not generally settle until a trial date has been obtained. You should therefore expect to wait between eighteen and thirty-six months for resolution of your wrongful death or catastrophic personal injury case. Your lawyer’s job is to resolve your case as favorably as possible in the shortest feasible amount of time.