The personal injury world is a high-stakes one due to what one party seeks to gain and the other, lose. This is especially true if you, the injured party, are suing for damages and your defendant is a corporate or high revenue firm. Defendants may act in a manner that is both unethical and illegal in order to deny you your justice and compensation, and sometimes, this involves tampering with or even destroying evidence. It is important to note that personal injury claims do not start their journey at a court, but they commence with the preservation of evidence as this, coupled with your injuries and the demonstration of how your injuries are linked to specific negligent acts will be what wins you your case.

Certain sophisticated tools are used in the pre-suit litigation phase, with one of these being the pre-suit litigation hold letter which essentially protects your interests while laying the foundation for a satisfactory settlement. This isn’t just a formality; it is a maneuver that may mean the difference between a strong claim replete with strong evidence, or one that is scrambling to prove things that cannot be substantiated by solid evidence. In this article, we shall analyze the details of this letter and show how it can be used as a veritable ally in seeking justice and compensation for your personal injury claim – read on to find out more.

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Are you looking for the best injury attorney? Please call us NOW at (314) 481-63338 to learn more about your legal options for justice and compensation. The experienced injury lawyers at McCready Law bring to the table over 90 YEARS of combined legal experience where we’ve helped tens of thousands of injured individuals seek compensation after getting injured due to the negligent acts of other parties and even large corporations. To date, we have been able to recover over $260 million and counting for our clients, and our incomparable success can be attributed to operating strategies that are different from those of other law firms such as personally handling claims as tenured attorneys and not shunting them over to legal assistants and paralegals as is often seen in most law firms, working closely with the client in an open and collaborative manner to ensure all possible weaknesses in the case are patched up.

On top of that, we usually upon the expertise of world-renowned experts such as top physicians, celebrated investigators, and experienced accident reconstruction experts and forensic professionals, all done in an effort to build a robust case replete with evidence and objective opinions that prove the other party indeed acted from a place of negligence, thereby leading to your injuries.

We are also not afraid to litigate claims should we believe that doing so may get you maximum compensation, particularly if the insurance company is not amenable to good faith negotiations. We run a bilingual firm (hablamos Español), and we take on all cases on contingency fee basis, which simply means that there are ZERO UPFRONT FEES for the duration of the processing of your claim, as we only levy our fees at the end of the suit, and only if we’ve recovered compensation on your behalf. If you or a loved one got injured due to someone else’s negligence, please call us NOW at (314) 481-63338 to learn more about your legal options for justice and compensation – our intake team is standing by.

The Primary Function of a Pre-Suit Litigation Letter

The two primary roles served by a pre-suit litigation hold letter are preservation and persuasion. To begin with, it serves as an explicit command to a corporation to disregard or pause its normal document retention policies. Many companies routinely automate the deletion of documents and data such as digital logs and surveillance footage after a certain amount of time has passed. By filing this letter, they are compelled to stop which ensures vital evidence is preserved.

Secondly, this letter serves as a psychological cue that lets the corporation know that you are ready to fight should it come down to that, and puts them on notice so they take the matter seriously which can in turn lead to more favorable pre-litigation settlement negotiations. Ultimately, this letter lets them know that you are organized, knowledgeable and are ready to go the full monty if need be in order to get the justice and compensation you are rightfully owed.

The Legal Basis for a Pre-Litigation Hold Letter

When we look at the technical legal aspect of this letter, it creates a legal duty to preserve evidence as it states that the at-fault party knows, or reasonably should know that the evidence in their possession is relevant to pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation. The letter contains specificity that compels them to preserve this evidence and it prevents them from using the argument of being doubtful whether they should have foreseen the litigation.

This specificity extends out to the specific materials that must be preserved such as:

1. Documents and records which may include accident reports, employee training manuals, corporate policies, internal memos, safety inspection records and so on
2. Physical evidence such as a vehicle involved in the collision that caused your injuries, a failed ladder, or a cracked floor tile which caused your slip and fall
3. ESI or electronically stored information such as emails, text messages, social media posts, hard drive data and any information stored in the cloud or servers – in most instances, this is the first evidence to be deleted or destroyed.
4. Video and audio recording such as security camera surveillance footage, dashcam videos, bodycam footage and any other recordings that are relevant to the incident.

Consequences of Ignoring a Pre-Litigation Hold Letter

Should the defense decide to delete or tamper with evidence, there may be severe consequences. For starters, a court can instruct a jury to assume the evidence destroyed would have been unfavorable to the at-fault party, which may infer some form of guilt or liability. Next, they may be ordered to pay fines or cover your legal fees as well as any other costs associated with the spoliation. Third, should the defense team have any evidence that supports their case, it may not be considered in litigation. Lastly, if the spoliation action was so egregious, the court may simply enter a default judgement in your favor.

Best Nationwide Injury Attorneys – Call Us Today!

A successful injury claim involves surgical moves and timely action – at McCready Law, we are well-versed when it comes to drafting a pre-litigation hold letter ensuring it is specific to your incidence, and ensure that we get this letter to the defendant at lightning speed so they do not have the opportunity to feign ignorance. In addition, we work with a team of experts to assess this evidence so that a strong case can be built in your favor, with the end goal being getting you the maximum compensation allowable by law.

If you’ve been injured due to a reckless truck or company driver, got burned in an apartment fire, fell from a height while working at a construction site, or just slipped, fell and injured your head or back at a well-known retail store, please reach out to us NOW at (314) 481-63338 to learn more about your legal options for justice and compensation. We serve a nationwide clientele, so feel free to call us from wherever you are. Thanks for choosing McCready Law, and we look forward to helping you.