Empower the Injured: A How-To Guide for Handling Your Own Personal Injury Claim

CHAPTER 1

The First 100 Hours After Your Accident

The first hundred hours after the accident are crucial. A lot that happens in this time will affect your case down the line. If you follow these steps, you can help preserve your case.

Later in this book, we will go into greater detail regarding the topics discussed in this chapter. However, if you are in the first hundred hours of your accident, I provided a brief overview of the things you can do to best preserve your case.

Medical Treatment

Plain and simple, if you’re injured in an accident, you should immediately seek medical care. You shouldn’t underestimate the extent of your injuries and try to be tough – you should go to a medical provider and get an evaluation. Go to an emergency room or some provider as soon as possible after the accident, to get an evaluation and diagnosis of your injuries.

When a person waits to receive the treatment, the insurance company (or other side) can point out that since they waited to seek treatment, they were not very injured. Although this may not be true, insurance companies commonly employ this tactic to minimize a claim’s value. Aside from helping your claim’s value, you can get some kind of evaluation as to what your preliminary injuries are, and whether you can use that information down the line during the settlement process.

If after an evaluation you still feel pain or soreness, you should seek the opinion of a specialist. An orthopedic surgeon can be consulted at first, where they can properly diagnose the cause of the pain, and decide what the proper course of treatment will be for that pain. Additionally, a specialist’s opinion (like an orthopedist) will likely have greater weightage than that of a general practitioner in the eyes of the insurance company.

Calling the Police

If you’re involved in an automobile accident, you should consider calling the police so that they can create a police report. The police report will have weight when it comes to approaching the insurance companies, in terms of liability, to settle your claim. This does not mean that if the police report says that the other party is at fault that your case will be a slam dunk, but it can help prove your side of the story. If you’re not sure who’s at fault, then proceed with caution, since the police report may turn against you. But if the liability is clear to you that the other person caused the accident (such as in a case where you were rear-ended while you were travelling safely), then calling the police to file a report will have a lower risk. It is best to get a police report that shows that you were injured and another person caused the accident.

The police can come and take down information regarding who was involved, how the accident occurred, and other identifiable information along with witness information. This will also help if the other party involved in the accident is not being cooperative with providing their information. That way, you can get their contact and insurance information (or lack thereof), in case you need to make a claim against their insurance or your own insurance.

Don’t let the other driver convince you to not call the police. Oftentimes, the other party will try to befriend you and ask you to not deal with the police and insurance companies, but just to make a deal without insurance company involvement. Don’t take the bait! People often agree to this, but it doesn’t end well many times. It’s better to have a police report on your side than not to have one at all, instead of battling against someone in court, who says they are not at fault, without you having much proof that they were.

When the police show up, you should get the police officer’s name and badge number. If they are taking down information, they will often have a card that contains the information about the traffic collision report. Get that card so that you have an easier time obtaining the traffic collision report down the line. A traffic collision report is usually available a few weeks after the accident, so the officer or sheriff has time to draft the report. You can simply ask them when reports are usually ready, and then follow up with the department at that time.

If you notice that someone is acting aggressively, or appears to be intoxicated, you should inform the police. There are instances where a person can get attorney’s fees if the liable driver was intoxicated during the accident.

You should also inform the officer if you are injured. If you need an ambulance, don’t hesitate to get one to take you to the hospital. Worry about the expenses later–your health is most important.

See Chapter 2 on police reports for more details.

Witness Information

Getting witness statements and information can change a case from a weak he-said she-said case to a strong one. If there were witnesses to the accident, get their information as quickly as possible. You want to do this sooner rather than later to prevent any complications in gathering witness information in the future.

Get the contact information of the witnesses as well – their name, phone number, address, email address, and other information so you have a way of getting in touch with them in case you need to.

You can scout around the accident area and see whether people saw how the accident took place. If there are stores nearby, you can approach them and ask if people saw how the accident occurred.

Not only do you want to get the witness’ contact information, but also ask them to recollect what they saw. Call them to try and track down everything they had witnessed pertaining to the accident. You can also document your conversation in the letter to them. Their recollection of events could be very helpful when it’s time for you to present a settlement demand to the other party’s insurance company, or your own.

It is possible that you will only have a single opportunity to get the witness statement. So, if you’re not too injured, try and get immediate witness statements. Witnesses are generally flaky, so it’s always better to get their statements right away.

You can approach a person and ask them how the accident happened. You can simply pull out your cell phone, press the record button, ask them to consent to being recorded, and ask them to state what happened. Something to keep in mind is that you shouldn’t tell them what to say, but allow them to narrate how they saw the accident happen. So, you can simply ask them, How did the accident happen? Ask for as many details as possible.

You can even get a witness to write down their statement on a piece of paper. A statement doesn’t have to be made on formal paper, it just has to say what the witness saw in terms of how the accident occurred and any other details they may have.

See Chapter 7 on Gathering Your Evidence for more information and sample witness statements.

Photographs

Take pictures, lots of pictures. You should have pictures of the accident, property damage, injuries, and witnesses. Photographs greatly help a case; they bring a case to life. In the case of a car accident, another form of proof as to the extent of damage to the car, is an invoice from the car repair shop detailing how much property damage there was to the car. However, photographs will have more of an impact than an invoice, so take pictures.

In addition to taking pictures of the damage to a vehicle, if there’s some kind of debris or broken glass on the ground, take pictures of those as well. This will also show the severity of the accident and show why a person is likely to have been injured as a result of it.

You also want to take the types of photos that are going to show liability. Try and take pictures of the accident that will reflect how it occurred. If the pictures are good enough, you can use them to help put together exactly how the accident occurred.

If possible, try and find skid marks. If a person is about to get into an accident, what’s the first thing they do? Slam on the brakes. This can be an indicator as to who is at fault. Perhaps the faulty person was driving too fast, perhaps someone came to a sudden stop causing the accident. This evidence can be helpful in establishing the cause of the accident.

You could take photos of the general area around the accident. This can include traffic signs, traffic lights, how traffic is going. You should also include pictures of all the accident-involved cars, taken from a good angle. You can take many pictures from many different angles as well. You should take pictures of the weather conditions and time of day of the accident as well–if it was raining or sunny, if it was night-time or daytime. This will give a better indication of any distractions that may have caused the at-fault driver to cause the accident.

If there’s anything around you that was also damaged, such as a street post or tree, take a picture of that as well. Even though there might not be a damage claim for those objects against the at-fault party, it’s still helpful in showing the severity of the accident and how it actually occurred.

Take pictures of the witnesses and anyone who is involved in the accident. You can even take photos of the police officers so that you will be able to identify them later if you need to. This will help down the line when you need to get witness statements and put a face to the name. This can also serve to show that people were actually present during the accident.

After the accident, you should take pictures of any injuries and their progression. Injuries may develop after