After a car accident, you are probably in shock and are not necessarily thinking straight. However, if you are seriously injured and will ultimately be seeking compensation for your injuries and losses, it is important for you to try to do your part to help your car accident lawyer build your case from the ground up. So, how do you do that?
As most people know, you need to exchange personal and insurance information with the at-fault driver. And, if you and/or one of your passengers are badly hurt, you need to call for an ambulance and for the police.
Having a police officer come to the scene is important because he or she will make observations about the accident, prepare notes, and speak to independent witnesses (which can sometimes be critical, since they have no financial or personal stake in the case). Often, the police officer may take photographs and measurements as well, all of which are useful.
If the damage to the vehicles is not too significant, or if you don’t immediately feel pain, you might forgo immediate police involvement and attend a Collision Reporting Centre instead. Before going there, try to get the names and contact information of any independent witnesses yourself. Take photographs on your smart phone, but be sure to take close-ups as well as overviews of the whole scene. In one of our cases, the at-fault party claimed that our client had drifted into his lane, but our quick thinking client had a photo overview of all lanes showing that his vehicle remained in its rightful lane, while the defendant’s vehicle had in fact drifted into our client’s lane.
Some areas have traffic cameras or perhaps video cameras located on an adjacent storefront. Make note of these and see if you or an officer can obtain the footage before it gets erased. A picture may be worth a thousand words in ordinary circumstances, but it can be priceless in a personal injury case.
If you are at the Collision Reporting Centre, take your time and make sure the officer who examines your vehicle sees all of the areas of damage. Also, take your time when completing the forms you are given, particularly the description of the accident and the diagram. When two parties have competing stories about how an accident happened, sometimes it’s the little details and the completeness of the story that makes it more believable.
At no time should you say any more to the at-fault party than is absolutely necessary. The same holds true for the insurance company. That dialogue could come back to haunt you later. It is better to retain an experienced personal injury lawyer to speak to others, as well as gather information and documentation to strengthen your case from the outset.
Be mindful of social media, and don’t post your activities after the accident for the whole world to see! People will often write on Facebook or Twitter about attending a relative’s wedding and dancing until the wee hours, or post photos on Instagram showing them being active and physical. Depending on how computer savvy you are when it comes to privacy settings, you may also be unknowingly feeding this information to the insurance companies to use against you.
A critical thing an injured party must do is to seek treatment. We often tell our clients to concentrate on getting better and leave the paperwork and fighting to us. Going to see your family doctor and attending physical therapy or a specialist’s appointment are important to your recovery after a devastating accident, but the records that are generated by those visits are also tools which our firm can use to support your case. You can’t look an insurance adjuster in the eye and tell him or her how severely injured your client is, and how much the car accident has affected your client’s life, if there are no medical records to support this. After all, if you are in pain and having difficulty coping with normal daily activities, wouldn’t you be trying to find a medical solution?
Obviously, the best way to secure and build your case after a motor vehicle accident is to call a knowledgeable and experienced personal injury lawyer right away. Our firm will immediately go to work investigating, documenting, and building your case from the very first meeting. We will make sure that you are not taken advantage of by any insurance company, and that you obtain the benefits and compensation you are entitled to and deserve.
