Necessary evidence to gather before filing a personal injury lawsuit

To win any lawsuit, you need evidence – something to prove your claim right.

When your lawsuit is now based on personal injuries – where the offender can play the denial card – then you need evidence even more.

Unfortunately, not many victims take as much evidence from the site of their injuries as they ought to. And this is because most are either too injured or too ignorant of the importance of extracting evidence. And in some cases, some don't even know what information to extract.

In this guide, we’ll help you understand all the necessary evidence you need to take away from a site of injury.

PRO TIP: Even if you’re too injured to gather information from an accident scene, do not hesitate to ask anyone around you to do the gathering for you.

Visual proof of the accident

Even though there may be a CCTV camera around the site of the accident, you still want to take out your phone and snap a picture or record a video of the accident happening or any injury sustained afterward.

Having a visual proof of the accident can go a long way to prove the extent of the mistake of the offender.

With it, you have something to present as evidence when you get to the court of law.

Detailed police report

Another way to gather evidence from an accident spot is to call in an officer. More often than not, police officers know the right kind of information to extract from an accident scene. Unfortunately, when most people hear the word police, the next thing that comes to their mind is “arrest.” But this is not always true.

A police officer typically comes to an accident scene not to arrest but to gather irrefutable documentation called a police report. With this report, it becomes impossible for an offender to play the denial card when the case finally gets to a court of law.

A police report details the scene of the accident, records eye witness opinions on how things went down, and obtain eye witness’ statements, as well as get their contact information.

With a police officer on ground to do the digging, you, the injured party, can now seek treatment while the police gather what could be important evidence for a later personal injury case.

If you were in an accident and need to be taken to the hospital, you should always be sure to request that the police come and record the crime scene. Although, usually, if an ambulance needs to come, the police will usually arrive with it.

Statements from eye-witness

Some accidents happen so fast that it may be impossible for the victim to capture anything on the phone. This is particularly true of auto accidents.

If you ever experience this sort of accident, the next thing you can do is to gather as many eyewitnesses ' contact information as you can.

When the case gets to the court of law, it will help if there’s someone who can give an eye-witness account of what truly went down.

If you weren’t able to obtain any eye-witness contact information at the scene of the incident, you should seek professional advice from your personal injury lawyer on the next step to take.

Detailed documentation of injury

There is a reason why it’s called a personal injury claim.

If there are no injuries sustained after an accident, then there’s no case to be filed. The only condition upon which a successful personal injury lawsuit can be filed is if the victim has truly sustained an injury.

And as you might have guessed, the only way to prove you were truly injured in an accident is to provide a detailed documentation of injuries.

In most cases, injuries are pretty obvious. A broken arm or a serious laceration is pretty obvious and very easy to prove.

But what about those injuries that are not so obvious? What about potential injuries that may result from prevailing ones? How do you prove these ones?

The best way is to get to a hospital immediately after the incident and get examined by a qualified doctor. After the examination, the doctor will provide a report highlighting both present and potential injuries sustained, as well as recommended treatment procedures.

This medical report is all the evidence a victim needs as far as proving the existence of personal injuries goes.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or management of EconoTimes