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Now, if you’ve been injured in any kind of personal injury accident, your main focus should always be towards your quicker healing and recovery. However, months before you decide to file a lawsuit, you’ve been instituted in a hospital and you focus entirely on getting better. You start questioning yourself, however, that maybe it is getting too late to file. Is it really too late?
Well, the truth is that every province in the country has different statute of limitations and there is a set timeframe within which the claimant is capable of pursuing legal proceedings for his damages. In Ontario, it is essential to file for your claim within the stringent Statute of Limitations and that is why consulting an injury lawyer becomes imperative.
When it comes to the majority of the regular personal cases, there is a very basic two-year time frame within which you are capable of initiating your lawsuit. This clock starts ticking the moment the claimant learns about the details of the claim which are going to include the cause behind the injury, when the injury occurred and so forth.
It is quite important to ensure that you do not miss those time frames as they are absolutely imperative and very binding. However, the other thing that you need to consider is the defendant that you are filing your claim against. If it is a regular person or a company, you would have to file a letter of intent. This has to happen in order to allow the respective party that you intend to file a claim. Keep in mind that this is usually one of the most powerful negotiation tools that you could take advantage of if you want to get an out of court settlement. The other party would be given 30 days after you file the letter of intent and after this period is through, you can file your claim with the court.
On the other hand, if you are filing against a municipality or any other type of governmental authority for that matter, this secondary period jumps from 30 days to 60 days. After these periods are through, you would have 2 years to file your cases.
It is very important to make sure that you get everything done within the given time frames. In a lot of the situations after you let those 2 years slip, you wouldn’t have the right to file anymore, which is also a logical and reasonable consideration. After all, the other party should not live under the fear of prosecution throughout his entire life. This is why it is important to get the assistance of a professional personal injury lawyer and to handle everything within the given limits. This will ensure that you come across no problems on the way to recovering your compensation.