In a personal injury case if the plaintiff loses is he responsible for the defendant's court costs?

Since your lawyer's fee is undoubtedly a contingent fee, you have to ask yourself why he is frantic to settle at any price. After all, he stands to make money if he wins. Cases do not always turn out as strong as they seem when the lawyer first accepts the case. It happens. I would listen to his advice if he is an experienced personal injury lawyer. Your statement that your case is worth more than the defense wants to pay is purely subjective and fueled by your feelings. Your attorney hopefully has many years of litigation to use as an objective standard of what your case is worth.Hundreds of factors go into calculating what a case is worth. What your WANT is not one of them. The bottom line is that a case is worth what a jury would likely give you.

It is ominous that you seem to feel your evaluation of the case's value trumps that of your experienced attorney. And if he takes it to trial and the verdict is against you and you DO have to pay the defense court costs of $20,000, are you going to apologize to your lawyer and admit you were wrong? I don't think so. You'll blame him and sue him. So listen to him now and save yourself some pain.

How did the mediation go for you?

To answer your question about the defendant's court costs, it depends on several factors. Generally, in California, the prevailing party in a lawsuit is entitled to have the losing party pay certain costs. Under our Code of Civil Procedure Section 1033.5, these costs can include filing, motion and jury fees, deposition and transcription costs (including videotaping the deposition), process server's fees, witness fees, fees of expert witness (WHEN ORDERED BY THE COURT...more on this below), court reporters' fees, and costs of models, blowups of exhibits and photocopies of exhibits MAY be allowed if helpful to the jury in reaching a verdict. Please note, this is NOT a complete list of allowable costs...there are others in the statute.

The single most expensive cost in going to trial is usually for your designated expert witnesses. It can and often does cost thousands of dollars to take an expert through a trial. However, the language of the statute cited above only allows for expert witnesses ORDERED BY THE COURT. When the parties hire their own expert witnesses, each side usually bears that cost, and if you were to lose, you would NOT have to pay for the defendant's expert witnesses.

HOWEVER, like most things in the law, there are exceptions, and the most common one is where either side serves the other with a CCP section 998 Statutory Offer to Settle. Here's how it works: Say your attorney sends a pre-trial CCP 998 offer to settle your case (with your approval of course) for $10,000. The defendant can either reject the offer or, if she does nothing, it expires by statute 30 days after service (plus five days if mailed to the other attorney). Assuming it's rejected and you go to trial, if you get even a single penny more than $10,000.00, then the defendant, who could have settled before the trial for $10,000, will be on the hook to pay YOUR expert witness costs, AND interest on the entire amount of the judgment going back to the date it was rejected.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if the defendant sends you a CCP 998 offer to settle for $10,000, and you reject it, you will be on the hook for the defendant's expert witness costs if you get anything LESS THAN the $10,000 at trial.

These expert witness costs and interest charges are IN ADDITION to the items listed above under CCP 1033.5. The policy behind the CCP 998 Statutory Offer scheme is to get folks to make and accept reasonable settlement offers in order to get cases resolved without having to use the court facilities and judicial resources needlessly.

I hope this helps answer your question...and I hope your mediation was a success.

There are a number of factors to consider here. First, is whether there has been a 998 offer made in the case. If so, and you recover less than the 998 offer at trial, then yes, you may have to pay some of the defendant's costs.

Also, keep in mind that a jury trial can be very expensive, even for a relatively straightforward case. I am unsure what type of fee agrement you have with your attorney, but many require the client to pay trial costs such as expert fees. This can quickly become very costly as experts such as doctor and accident reconstructionists will charge several thousand dollars for just a day's worth of testimony.

It could be, in your case, that a lower settlement amount at mediation could yield you a greater net recovery than a much larger jury verdict simply because you will be saving the trial costs and the possibility of having to pay the defense costs.