A personal injury trial is a specialized trial. It determines whether one party is liable to pay damages to another injured party. There’s a specific process for how a personal injury trial proceeds.
First, a jury has to be convened. Each juror must be chosen to sit on the jury. All potential jurors are reviewed and questioned to make sure that they will be fair in their evaluation of facts and are capable of judging personal injury and responsibility.
Next, the attorneys make opening statements. In a personal injury trial, these are overviews of facts that each side suggest indicate that their argument is the correct one.
Victim and witness testimony comes next. In testimony, you can’t discuss rumor, nor can you conjecture about what you think happened. Testimony is where someone describes exactly what happened to them, or what they saw happen to someone. You can only talk about facts that you know from experience, usually.
Cross-examination may occur. If this happens, the opposing counsel questions a witness and reviews their statements, with the goal of exposing inconsistency, bias, or untruthfulness.
Next are closing arguments. Both sides give a closing. Each summarizes their case. This is done at the very end, and it is the last presentation that is made before the jury leaves to debate and vote.
These steps are all a way to help the jury be able to make a strong evidence-based determination of fault. They should have a good idea of what really happened in the case, and whose fault it is that injury occurred. They do this by reviewing the data, and then the jury votes whether the plaintiff wins or the defendant wins.
When the jury has decided this they will then give their ruling to the court. In most states it has to be a unanimous decision with all jurors agreeing. In states that this is not required, there still must be an overwhelming majority, of 9 to 3 or better.
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