One thing you should always remember when working with a car accident attorney is that they also act as a personal investigator for evidence in your case. While this sometimes involves hiring a personal investigator due to time issues, part of the attorney’s goal is gathering as much thorough evidence as possible so it paints a full picture of what really happened. If possible, it also gives a larger portrait of the negligent person you’re suing who instigated the accident.
Here at Hancock Injury Attorneys, this is part of our goal, as well as making the gathering of evidence a group effort. It’s always a good idea that you gather as much evidence as you can yourself at the accident scene. While we know this isn’t always possible if you’re whisked away in an ambulance, calling us immediately to the scene helps.
One reason why you shouldn’t delay having us gather evidence is because some evidence gets cleaned up much too fast. Also, some evidence takes extra time to gather. With a lawsuit statute of limitations beginning at the time the accident occurs, you want plenty of time available so we can gather as much evidence as possible. In a complex accident, it could take up to a year to find everything.
It’s here where more thorough evidence will help you. Beyond the expected pieces of evidence, what other things will we search for, yet possibly take months of time to find or analyze?
Finding Other Evidence
Photographs of the accident scene, medical records, and interviewing of witnesses are a given, with many of these usually gathered within days or weeks. However, when you get into examining the background of the negligent person, it’s going to take some patience. This also goes for outlying evidence perhaps owned by Tampa.
In the above case, we mean camera footage taken from traffic cams, or perhaps even security video. With cameras ubiquitous now, it makes our job so much easier gathering evidence in car accident cases. While camera footage isn’t always perfect depending on the angle and video clarity, it could at least prove the negligent person hit your car first.
As for finding evidence of the negligent driver, cell phone records or general history of that person may determine more than you think. Cell phone records determine whether that person was talking on their phone while driving, hence being a distracted driver. General history also may show the driver was driving without a license. Perhaps they have a long record of other accidents due to distractions, or driving drunk.
In some cases, it could be the vehicle or vehicles are partially to blame. We’ll investigate the history of the negligent driver’s car, including a vehicle inspection to see if there was a mishap in the manufacturing.
