Missing A Deadline

Types of Legal Malpractice: Missing a Deadline or Statute of Limitations

The law is full of deadlines. When lawyers fail to act before a deadline or statute of limitations is up, this can be legal negligence. Failing to act on a deadline could compromise a client’s case and lead to serious legal and financial consequences. For example, if your lawyer fails to make your claim within a certain period of time, you may lose your right to that claim forever, Because of the critical importance that deadlines hold, lawyers must be held responsible for missing them.

Below are examples of filing deadlines.

Falls on public property: If you fall on public property you have 90 days to file a Tort Claims Act Notice of Claim.

Professional malpractice (including legal malpractice and medical malpractice): You have 60 days to file an Affidavit of Merit in a professional malpractice case. Pretrial discovery often must be finished within a certain number of days.

Other personal injury: Apart from cases of slander, you have 2 years after the incident to sue in cases of personal injuries. If you want to sue for slander you to have to do so within one year of the slander.

Contracts: For a written contract, the statute of limitations to sue is 6 years. However, if that written contract is an insurance policy, it is usually one year.

Lawyers may tell you that missing deadlines sometime just happens, just as airline passengers sometimes miss flights. It does indeed happen often -- but there can be serious consequences for the client, consequences for which they should be fully compensated. Just like any other profession, lawyers must be held accountable for their mistakes. If your lawyer’s oversight has lead to serious harm to you, you may be able to recover damages.

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Email me or call (609) 951-0088 to speak with an experienced legal malpractice attorney.

My law offices are in Princeton, NJ, but I can take cases from anywhere. Most of my clients have been throughout New Jersey, including Mercer County, Essex County, Bergen County, Passaic County, Middlesex County, Somerset County, Atlantic City, Freehold, Hackensack, Newark, Trenton, New Brunswick, Paterson, Somerville, and more.