LawCall: Coronavirus and the Courts

Attorney Michael Timberlake updates the status of court systems during this coronavirus outbreak and social restrictions.

To make sure we're keeping more than six feet of distance here, so we're talking about, of course, coronavirus and the court.

What is the latest in coronavirus and the court system?

>> michael timberlake: well, the coronavirus has had a big impact on even's life, and the legal world it has the same type of impact.

Basically what is courts in alabama have done is suspended any in-person hearings that you have to have with parties would be present in court for 30 days or at least through april 30th.

Now, most of the judges in our area have adapted, and they're doing teleconferences and they there are telephone conferences where people do not have to appear in person.

But there are some types of things where people have to come, you know, protection from abuse orders or potentially criminal, you know, clients that are charged, that have a constitutional right to be, you know, confront their accusers.

So there are things that the court system is working around, but in general, it's, you know, slow, but they haven't stopped.

And that order is in place until april 30.

>> all right.

Thank you.

Of course, more on that you can visit www.law-injury.com and also find us on facebook.

So let's start tonight with an email question.

Nev asks: what is my attorney working on if the courthouse is closed?

Michael?

>> michael timberlake: there is a lot of stuff we're working on, and i tell everybody, we're using this as a chance to kind of get caught up on a lot of things that we weren't able to do when we're litigating cases.

In order to prepare a case for litigation, we you have to go through a discovery process, an information sharing process, and that can be very time-consuming for both staff members and attorneys.

So we're trying to get caught up on that.

The other thing we're doing is trying to, you know, review cases that we would potentially take.

You know, to determine whether or not this is something that we want to be involved in or something that we can make a legitimate case of.

You know, other things that we're doing are trying to, you know, make sure that we contact our clients to let them know where their case stabbed, what is going