Expert Designations in Maryland
One of the benefits for attorneys handling personal injury cases on behalf of injury victims is that plaintiffs' lawyers are far better able to dictate the pace of the litigation than defense attorneys. Some accident lawyers squander this opportunity by failing to fully load the gun before firing it. When our attorneys file a lawsuit, we serve the defendant with the Complaint, Requests for Admission, Interrogatories, and Request for Documents, and Expert Designations.
Our lawyers have always served a full course of discovery with our Complaint. What we have been doing in 2006 is filing our expert designations along with our Complaint. It is one more hoop a lawyer has to jump through when filing a Complaint but it takes away another deadline you will need to meet down the road. I just did a quick Lexis search typing in different searches to pull up missed expert deadline cases. In just a few minutes, I found hundreds of cases.
The only caveat to this is that you still need to put the expert deadline on your calendar and check off the list to make sure that you do not need additional experts for trial. Sometimes, you think you do not need an economist or a vocational rehabilitation expert when you file suit but you find out that you do over the course of the case. You may also find additional treating doctors over the course of the case if you client is still suffering from his or her injuries that you may want to add down the road.
Happy Mother's Day to all!
