Like much of the country, Kansas City is seeing an exponential increase in COVID-19 cases. As a personal injury lawyer handling Kansas City cases, here’s how the Coronavirus pandemic will affect your case should you be the victim of someone’s negligence right now.
If your case is outside of a lawsuit, it shouldn’t have much effect. For those cases, its business as usual, for the most part. We already had the capability for staff to work remotely, and most of us did so at least once per week. Now, we’re mandating all employees work from home. We’re taking turns going into the office every day to get the mail and scan it in. We should be able to continue to pursue injury cases as normal.
However, since most of the country is either not working or working remotely, our investigation and workup of cases will likely slow down. For example, it may take longer to get records like crash reports, medical records, and 911 recordings. This is because these places are also limiting their gatherings and having employees work from home, which slows down record retrieval. Also, with school cancelled, parents are having to fend off kids (not to mention homeschool them) while trying to get work done from home, which understandably slows things down.
For cases in which lawsuits have actually been filed, settling or getting to trial will take much longer. This is because the Missouri Supreme Court suspended all in-person court appearances until April 3, 2020. This includes personal injury jury trials and any hearings in personal injury lawsuits. If you have a personal injury lawsuit on file, you won’t be able to have your day in court until April 3, 2020. However, the Supreme Court will probably continue this order until the Coronavirus pandemic ends.
The Kansas Supreme Court issued a similar order. It says, “All jury trials, both civil and criminal, scheduled to begin in any Kansas state court on or after the date of this order are continued until further order of the Chief Justice.”
Although Kansas City area personal injury cases that are currently in suit will be delayed until the pandemic winds down, cases in which a lawsuit has not been filed should be able to proceed as usual, though with some delays from the quarantine.
If you’ve been hurt in a car crash or other personal injury incident, and have questions how the Coronavirus pandemic might affect your claim, please feel free to call our office at any time. We are able to help you, even when working from home.