Lucas Foust:
Hi, this is Lucas Foust from Foust Law Office and I'm here to answer another quick question, and this question comes from people who have been in a car crash and are curious about just how long the process of either settling the case or litigating the case is likely to last.
Lucas Foust:
Unfortunately, I don't have a quick answer for this. It depends on a lot of factors. Litigation can take an awful lot of time. Unfortunately, in this county here in Bozeman, it takes over two years before a case goes from being filed as a complaint to trial and in the meantime, a lot of things can happen during that process. Witnesses can be lost, witnesses can be hard to find, there can be continuances on top of that, but we try to use a rule of thumb of about two years for the entire litigation process. If your case does not have to go through the litigation process and you're able to settle, it's a lot less than two years. You can look at two to three months in some settlements, those are short or that's the quick version or cases that run, again, a full two years to go to jury trial and onto appeal.
Lucas Foust:
I recommend this, more than anything else I recommend that you be patient and you understand that, yes, this is going to take some time but there is some light at the end of the tunnel. A law school professor I had used to say, "It takes as long as it takes," and I hate to give you that as an answer but it does. It just takes as long as it takes for a case to come to its conclusion. To answer this question and many other questions, I recommend that you download our book, Abandoned on the Road: A Guide to Insurance in Montana. At Foust Law Office we believe that an informed client is a better client.