What Is The Defendant’s Response To A Filed Complaint?

Any injured victim has the right to file a lawsuit. That means filing a complaint. Once that action has been taken, the potential plaintiff must serve the complaint on the defendant. Then the same plaintiff must await the defendant’s response.

Each such response should contain 3 sections.

• Denial of the plaintiff’s allegations
• Denial of certain specific allegations
• Introduction of a considered defense

What could be the basis for a denial of the plaintiff’s allegations?

In a personal injury case, this would usually take the form of a challenge to the plaintiff’s ability to prove all 4 elements of negligence. The absence of a proof for each of the 4 elements would cause the court to deny the plaintiff’s ability to pursue the filed lawsuit.

Courts also deny such allegations if the required complaint was filed after the deadline, as stated in the state’s statute of limitations. In such instances, the tardy almost-plaintiff loses the right to sue the named defendant.

What could be the basis for a denial of certain specific allegations?

A defendant does not have the right to state simply that not all the proofs of negligence have been shown by the plaintiff’s complaint. In addition, it becomes the defendant’s duty to mention which proof is missing.

Typically, plaintiffs struggle to prove causation. That is demonstration of a direct link between the defendant’s actions and development of the plaintiff’s injury. The absence of such a link could become the basis for a denial of specific allegations.

What sort of defense might the defendant’s legal team have under consideration, following receipt of the plaintiff’s complaint?

Sometimes, that legal team has reason to believe that it can allege shared fault. That would not eliminate charges against the defendant, but it would reduce the amount of money that the plaintiff could expect from the person that was served with the complaint.

At other times, the defendant’s attorney might suspect that the plaintiff has failed to mitigate the effects of his or her injury. All injury victims are supposed to mitigate such effects. Courts refuse to charge defendants for any injury that has been made more serious by the nature of the plaintiff’s actions.

Personal Injury Lawyer in Kitchener knows that insurance companies pay some adjusters to study social media accounts. Some plaintiffs post pictures on such accounts, and offer proof of the fact that their actions were capable of slowing or reversing the expected recovery of the accident-linked injury.

It is also possible that the filer of the lawsuit has failed to follow the treatment prescribed by his or her physician. An insurance company could use that failure as a reason for refusing to compensate the injured victim. Plaintiffs cannot mitigate an injury by not pursuing prescribed treatment.