Yes - in Virginia, you can usually change lawyers even after a case has started. But the harder question, and the one that matters most, is whether your product claim is still alive and against the right defendant.

Virginia's basic deadline for most injury lawsuits is 2 years from the date of injury under Va. Code § 8.01-243. If your recalled car part injured you more than 2 years ago and no lawsuit was filed in time, switching lawyers will not fix that.

If a lawsuit was filed before the deadline, you can still change attorneys. The new lawyer normally files a substitution with the Chesapeake or Norfolk court handling the case. Your old lawyer may claim a lien for fees and case costs from any later recovery, which matters if medical bills or health-plan reimbursement claims are piling up around tax season.

The follow-up question you should be asking is: who should have been sued - manufacturer, seller, installer, or all three?

That matters because Virginia does not recognize strict liability for most product-injury cases. These cases are usually built on:

• Negligence
• Breach of warranty
• Sometimes failure to warn or faulty installation

A recall helps, but it is not automatic proof. It may show the manufacturer knew of a defect, but you still need to connect that defect to your crash or injury. If a shop in Chesapeake installed the part wrong, or a seller put the wrong recalled part into circulation, the target may not be just the manufacturer.

Virginia is also a contributory negligence state. If the defense can show you were even 1% at fault, recovery can be barred. In a car-part case, that often turns into arguments about maintenance, ignored warning lights, or delayed repairs after a recall notice.