Settlement vs Trial in a Cherry Hill Nursing Home Abuse Case

If your elderly loved was mistreated at their assisted living facility, in the course of your case, you will make the ultimate decision to either settle or go to trial. Your attorney can help you understand your case and make recommendations to either accept or decline a settlement offer. Ultimately, though, it is your and your family’s decision.

An experienced attorney, if they do not think the settlement is enough, would recommend to continue fighting and pushing so that the nursing home is held accountable. If you want to settle your nursing home abuse case, you have every right to do so. However, if you agree the money is not enough, you can keep fighting and pushing until ultimately going to trial. For more details on the benefits and disadvantages of settling versus going to trial in a Cherry Hill nursing home abuse case, connect with a member of our team today.

Settlement Considerations

There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not someone should consider settlement or trial in their Cherry Hill nursing home abuse case. The important thing is looking at the liability picture: what happened, how much of a deviation from the standard of care it is, the damages, the injuries, the economic losses including medical bills, lost wages, and future medical treatment.

When looking at the settlement offer, if the amount offered is fair in light of all of that and the nursing home has accepted responsibility for their actions, then it may make sense to settle the case. A time when it does not make sense to settle the case is when the nursing home and the insurance company are offering a number that is nowhere near what seems fair for the situation.

If the facility refuses to acknowledge their fault and to make things right for what they did, the plaintiff should not accept a settlement, but if they are trying to make a good faith effort to resolve it and acknowledge the negligence on their behalf, then it makes sense to consider it. These factors all go into deciding whether to settle or go to trial in a local nursing home abuse case.

Role of a Cherry Hill Attorney in Settling vs Going to Trial in a Nursing Home Abuse Case

It is always the resident’s family who must decide between settling and going to trial in a Cherry Hill nursing home abuse case, but the plaintiff’s lawyer can utilize their experiences and cases they have handled in the past to get a general idea of what they feel a fair settlement offer would be. An attorney can make those recommendations to the families of abused nursing home residents.

What is interesting in the state of New Jersey is a lot of people do not realize until they have a lawsuit that an attorney does not have the ability under the rules of court to tell a jury how much money they are looking for, so when they go in front of that jury, they cannot give them guidance on what they feel the case is worth. That jury needs to come up with that number entirely on their own. Sometimes, the jury may think they are doing someone a huge favor and offering a number that they do think is fair. The family of the mistreated resident can decide whether to accept the offer.