Before the trial takes place, how much does the trial judge know about your particular personal injury case?
Before the trial takes place, how much does the trial judge know about your particular personal injury case?
Status Conferences and Updates
When you initiate a lawsuit for an accident case, medical malpractice case, or even a wrongful death case, during the course of litigation, your lawyer will have to go into court and let the judge know through updates and status conferences, what is happening in your particular case. However, you need to keep in mind that every judge in New York has a large workload.
Your case is not the only one on the docket.
These judges might be handling two hundred to four hundred cases at any one time. The point is that on most days of the week, judges will hold conferences on each of these cases. The same judge might see twenty to thirty different cases in an entire morning, and he will deal with two or three attorneys on every single case that comes before him.
In such a scenario, it is not possible for judges to remember all the details in every single case. When your case is assigned to a trial judge, your attorney, and the defense attorney will go before this judge to inform him about the details of your case. The lawyers will have the opportunity to tell the judge about the details of your case that they were unable to do during the status conferences due to time restraints.
Your lawyer will now have the chance to explain to the judge quickly, what it is that you think was done wrong, and what were the injuries you suffered because of that. The defense likewise, will have the opportunity to explain what their defense is for this particular case.
The Trial Brief
Moreover, your lawyer will also provide the judge with a trial brief which is pivotal. A trial brief gives the judge a clear understanding in written format of what your claims are in this case, and what the injuries are that you have suffered. In addition, the trial brief will include key pieces of law that your lawyer thinks is necessary to teach and educate the judge about the issues that are going to come up during the course of this trial.
Now, many people believe that the judge knows the law and the judge does. However, the reality is that the judge and his assistant, who is known as a law secretary or law clerk, have the ability to research any aspect of law because there is always more to learn and there are so many laws that no one can possibly have them all in their head. On top of this, there are past cases that can be used to support or block any new cases pertaining to this law.
Reading Up on the Law
Even though the judge is knowledgeable about different laws, it is not possible to remember every law, its intricacies, and previous references as already stated. The trial brief will give an outline about the case and the laws that will be used in arguing the case. Based on this information, the judge and his law clerk can look up these laws and conduct further research as required.
Hence, whether the judge knows all the details about your case, will depend on how many cases he is handling, and whether he has been given the trial brief and kept updated about the various developments taking place in your case by your attorney.
