Michigan Wrongful Death Appeals

If your family is facing the prospect of filing a wrongful death action, there is a strong possibility that your case could go to a jury trial and unfortunately end up in the Michigan Court of Appeals. For this reason, you need to hire an attorney that has experience handling high profile appeals and making sure that your case is handled from start to finish.

The appeals process requires a specialist to handle the matter properly. It makes perfect sense to have the attorney who handled the trial to handle the appeal as well. No one knows your case better than the lawyer that has lived your case from start to finish. Add to that the fact that most Michigan wrongful death attorneys work on a contingency fee, and you have lawyers that are very motivated to win your appeal.

Appeals attorneys will undoubtedly charge a large fee for handling the long and tedious process of obtaining transcripts, drafting lengthy briefs and making sure that every argument is backed up by the latest court opinions and cases with precedent. The law office of Ford & Murphy have handle many high profile appeals cases and will make sure that your case is prosecuted to the highest levels.

Preserving Issues for Appeal

One of the things that is missed by family members searching for a trial attorney to handle their Michigan wrongful death case is the fact that many issues need to be preserved for appeal well before the trial process begins and before an appeal is even anticipated. A lawyer’s failure to preserve an issue for appeal could mean that you could be precluded from presenting certain issues for the Michigan Court of Appeals to consider. This can occur immediately in the case if there are pretrial motions that need to be filed, injunctions, or discovery disputes.

Once the issues are preserved for appeal properly, appeals can happen at any stage of a Michigan wrongful death claim. If there are critical motions that will have an impact on settlement negotiations and ultimately a verdict with a jury, then those decisions by the trial judge can be appealed if they have applied the wrong law or abused their discretion. This is called interlocutory appeals and this is where it becomes imperative to have a trial attorney that can handle appeals. Imagine that you are in the middle of a wrongful death case, feel that it is in everyone’s interest to appeal a devastating decision, and you need to start the lawyer search all over again!  This does not make any sense at all for the family. Make sure that you inquire of your trial attorney whether or not they have experience handling complex appeals matters, especially those in wrongful death cases. As the exposure increases for insurance companies, you will unfortunately find that they will fight matters that much harder to avoid a company loss.

Appeals Can Take Years To Be Decided

If you are considering hiring an attorney to handle your family’s wrongful death case, you need to remember that not only could the trial process itself take three years of more, the appeals process after the fact could take that long as well. This means that the decision of who to hire in your case takes on even more importance as you will be basically “married” to that person for many years. Therefore, it is important to inquire about their competency in appeals, but also to make sure that your communication styles match and that you like the person that will be going to battle with you in the trenches against the insurance companies involved.

Appeals Demand Attention to Detail

So many families hire the personality that they saw on a television commercial or they allow themselves to be “sold” by the slick attorney that knows all the right words to say in an office conference. Wrongful death cases require a great trial attorney that can communicate to a judge and jury. However, they also require an outstanding attention to detail from the time a fee agreement is signed by the family. Every decision made by the lawyer and their staff can have an impact on the eventual outcome in the case. Appeals are incredibly detailed oriented, and the law clerks that oversee the filing of briefs demand that appeals attorneys follow every rule or else the case could be dismissed. Therefore, be mindful of the attention to detail an attorney shows your case from the very beginning.