Filing a lawsuit over daycare abuse is generally done after the criminal cases have been taken care of. It’s important to speak with a lawyer right away, however, because there are limitations on how long you have to file a lawsuit after the abuse has been discovered. If you’re debating the issue, at least call an attorney and see how long you have to decide.
If you do decide to sue, there are some things you can expect and that you can prepare yourself for ahead of time. The process is usually less painful than most people expect, especially if you have a good lawyer who can make sure you’re never in the dark about what’s going on.
Checklist
You’ll want to make sure of the following when you start looking for attorneys:
- They work on contingency
- They have experience with these cases
- They give you the sense that they’re compassionate
- They’re successful enough in their practice that you can have confidence in them
Getting Ready
The attorney will, first and foremost, need to sit down with you so that they can determine how strong your case is. In some instances, they may not be able to help you. The contingency portion of the checklist comes into play in such a situation. An attorney that works on contingency only gets paid if they win, so they don’t have any motivation to take a case that they think is going to lose. They’re not going to charge you attorney’s fees for a case that they know is going to lose.
If the attorney wants to take your case, they’ll take care of gathering evidence that will work in your favor. There are lots of different sources that they can use, including the criminal cases against any abusers, information about the facility and so forth. Attorneys are specialists in research, so they can pull together an amazing amount of information in a short amount of time and turn it into a coherent case that they can argue for you in court.
The attorney will help you to determine how much you should sue for. This can be a difficult number ot set, for obvious reasons, but the attorney will give you guidance and make sure that you pick a realistic figure.
A daycare abuse lawyer will make sure you’re ready to go to court if you need to to relate to the jury the story of the daycare child abuse your family endured.