Having started my career working primarily on mass torts, dipping my toes into the world of individual injury cases (a one-off case as I like to call it) has been quite the learning experience. Ironically, a couple of years ago, in 2015, I wrote an article regarding the special attention needed to effectively represent mass tort clients. Little did I know that I would soon learn the intricacies of an individual case and the different, yet equally demanding, attention required for this new (to me) type of case. While there are many similarities to handling a mass tort and an individual case, there are also a number of differences, which caused this mass tort lawyer to stumble a bit during my first one-off case.
Length of Time
If there’s one thing we all know, lawsuits can take a long time. One of the down sides for a mass tort client is that their case generally takes a number of years to resolve (they benefit in other ways such as sharing costs with other plaintiffs—I’ll get to that below.) My recent experience with individual cases showed me how much shorter the timeline can be for those cases. In my short exposure to individual cases, I’ve seen a number of cases resolve. On the other hand, mass tort cases that began before my time at my firm (which will be four years as of the publication of this article) are still pending. I’ve also seen one-off cases resolve before we had to dig in our heels and spend a lot of money. When there’s only one case to focus on, the parties often have a greater grasp of the strengths and weaknesses and the case can be resolved much more expeditiously to the benefit of the client.
Discovery
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