Public Place Claims
13. Negotiation & Resolution
Firm / Chambers:
Last updated: 25 Aug 2015
- After a period of time your injury will be considered stable. This can take several months or even years. During this time you will have gathered all the information you can about your accident and you will have calculated how much compensation you are seeking. At this point you can consider entering into settlement negotiations with the respondent.
- The law in most states and territories requires that a settlement conference be held prior to commencing proceedings in a court. This means that the law requires the parties to genuinely attempt to resolve the claim out of court by way of settlement negotiations.
- A meeting can be set up where you hold a settlement conference with the other party and attempt to resolve your claim by making offers of settlement. Usually the law requires that various formalities and forms are completed prior to a settlement conference but you will need to check the legislation in this regard. If you have a lawyer acting for you they will complete all of the formalities and meet with you to discuss what will happen at the settlement conference.
- Most claims are settled during settlement negotiations whether these are at a formal settlement conference, meetings between the parties, before or after meetings, by letter or by telephone.
- The law in most states and territories encourages settlement to occur and usually has requirements that must be met before a claimant can take a claim to court.
- It is in both parties’ interests to settle the claim and avoid going to court. The reason it is better to settle the claim rather than go to court is that the court process is lengthy, stressful and expensive.
- You will need to start preparing paperwork all over again as the court process has a different set of rules and specific court documents need to be prepared and lodged.
- You need to check the relevant legislation in your state and territory as the rules are different in each jurisdiction however once a settlement conference has occurred and the claim remains unresolved there are steps that must be taken under the law in order to commence a claim in the court. There will also be specific timeframes for commencement of a claim in the court.
- At this point it would be highly recommended to instruct a lawyer to act for you as court documents will need to be prepared and lodged and different court rules apply to the lodgement and service of court documents. All of the information gathered to date about your accident and injury will need to be used for the purposes of preparing your court documents. The evidence will be before the court if the claim gets to trial.
- For more information see our Negligence & Torts topic, our Court Trials & Appeal Courts topic and our Civil Litigation topic. These will service as a guide for the general steps required to commence a claim in the court, the process for litigated claims and a broad overview of the elements you will need to prove.
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