FAQs

The best way to schedule a meeting is to call our office at (614) 321-3212 and ask to speak with one of our lawyers. There is no charge for an initial consultation. Also, if you or your loved one is unable to come to our office for the meeting, we will make arrangements to meet at a mutually convenient location.

You will meet with an attorney at your initial consultation. The purpose of the meeting is for us to find out as much as possible about your potential case and to answer as best we can any questions that you may have. We always try to provide potential clients with an honest and realistic evaluation of their case. We do not take every person that contacts us with a potential case. Also, many cases must be investigated before a decision can be made regarding whether to pursue the case.

We provide legal services to our clients on a contingency fee basis. This means that we are paid only if you make a recovery. If we do not obtain a recovery for you, we are not paid anything for our legal services. We also advance all expenses necessary to vigorously prosecute your case. If there is a recovery made, the expenses that our firm advances are paid from the client’s percentage of the recovery. If we do not obtain a recovery for your, then you do not have to reimburse our firm for the money invested into your case.

Every case is different. Generally speaking, the average case that goes to trial usually costs somewhere between $15,000 and $150,000. Cases involving multiple parties and complicated issues, such as product liability and medical negligence cases, can cost in excess of $150,000 to pursue. Rourke & Blumenthal can advance all of the costs of litigation and charge you nothing unless a settlement or judgment is obtained.

The answer to this question depends on a number of different things. For example, the typical personal injury case related to a car crash can take anywhere from six months to three years to resolve depending on the complexity and the nature of the injuries involved. A medical negligence case or a product liability case usually takes at least two years, if not longer, to resolve. As our client, we will keep you informed of all the developments in your case as it moves forward.

Not in our opinion. For instance, in order to file a medical negligence lawsuit in Ohio, a qualified expert physician must first review the case and determine whether it has merit. We cannot, and will not, file a medical negligence case on behalf of a client unless a qualified expert physician tells us that the client was harmed by negligence. We undertake the same type of investigation for all of our other cases as well. If you think about it, given that we handle these cases on a contingency fee basis, it would not make very much business sense for us to invest a lot of time and money into a case unless we felt strongly about its merits.

There is also no evidence that there is an unusually high number of personal injury and negligence lawsuits being filed in Ohio. In 2006, there were 1,500 negligence suits filed against doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and other professionals in the state of Ohio. The data shows that only 134 of these cases actually went to trial. In comparison, there were 79,000 foreclosure lawsuits filed, and business vs. business lawsuits outnumbered personal injury lawsuits by more than 4 to 1. The data also shows that the number of personal injury and medical negligence lawsuits has steadily declined over the past 10 years.

If you are more than 51 percent at-fault for your accident, then you cannot file a claim. For example, if another car was speeding, but you ran a red light, then the court would most likely award the majority of fault to you.