Can You Ruin Your Personal Injury Case? What You Should and Shouldn’t Do After an Injury

How Personal Injury Cases are Won

In The Article

Why Should You Get Medical Attention After an Injury?

Getting medical attention immediately after an injury doesn’t always cross people’s minds. For those who experience shock or an adrenaline rush after their injury, they may not feel as though they’re in pain or anything is wrong. In cases of major injury, some people may not feel pain or other symptoms until days later.

Getting medical attention immediately after an accident can help you collect evidence for your personal injury case in many ways.

A surefire way to ruin your personal injury case would be to avoid getting any medical attention and trying to “tough it out”. You’ll lose essential and official documentation of your injuries, which is the same as throwing evidence out the front door in a windstorm.

How Medical Attention Assures Your Health

Seeking medical attention within a few hours of your injury can ensure that you are fully examined, even if you aren’t feeling pain. CT scans and X-rays can show injuries that you may not know about. Once you’re fully examined, you and your doctor can come up with a plan to heal.

In addition, a full medical exam after an injury can help you avoid exacerbating your injuries, which could cause more pain down the road.

How Medical Attention Helps Your Personal Injury Case

Medical records become excellent evidence in personal injury cases. They give you documentation from medical professionals that help you prove that the negligent act from the defendant had a direct correlation to the injury that was caused. These documents can also show how severe your injuries were and how long it may take you to recover.

Should you feel as though your initial exam was not thorough enough, seek a second medical opinion, and ask that they document any injuries that were overlooked or unforeseen. Having clear medical documentation gives your personal injury attorney more negotiation power, should you have to fight with insurance companies to get the compensation you deserve.

How Can You Document a Personal Injury?

Medical records are a great way to help you prove your personal injury case, but more evidence can help drive your case home.

Some items for evidence that you can collect and preserve after your accident include:

Police Report

If you’ve been in a car accident, and the police showed up at the scene, there is a high likelihood that a police report will be written. You can request copies of the police report through your local department. Carefully review the details of the police report, and make sure you note any inconsistencies or incorrect information. You can contact your local police station to make sure any issues with the police report are noted.

In some slip and fall cases, a police report can be filed after the fact, but they aren’t as common.

For dog bite injuries, you can also file a police report after the fact, to ensure that the information of the defendant, dog, location, and circumstances surrounding the event are documented properly.

Pictures and Video

If possible, taking pictures of the area surrounding the injury site are a great help. Most cell phones are equipped with cameras that take images and video. A video of the site is also a great way to preserve visual evidence.

When taking pictures, be sure to take wide angles and close-ups of the area from every direction. Send them to yourself in a message with contextual notes for each image.

When taking a video of the area, move your camera slowly, to avoid motion marks or blurry segments. Give audio commentary of how the event occurred, and the circumstances surrounding the event.

Complaint Reports

In slip and fall or premises liability cases that occur on private property, you can file a complaint with the business you were injured at. Give detailed information on how the event occurred and be sure to note if there was any signage in the area you were injured.

Ask for an immediate copy of the complaint report or take an image of the document that has been signed by all people involved.

Witness Statements and Information

In many accident and injury cases, there are usually people who see what occurred or can attest to the conditions surrounding the incident.

If possible, get witness statements as soon as possible. If witnesses are willing, record what they are saying, so nothing is missed.

Always collect complete contact information from witnesses, including:

1. Full name (first and last)
2. Phone number or other direct contact information
3. Home address

This information can help as evidence and for further investigations.

Your Injury Journal

As soon as possible after an injury, start documenting EVERYTHING. Get a notebook specifically dedicated to the injury.

Some items to add immediately:

1. An extensive summary of the event
2. Weather conditions surrounding the event
3. What was said, as you remember it
4. What doctors or emergency medical service initially said
5. Witness contact information
6. Who was involved in the event
7. What you experienced or felt before, during, and immediately after the event

As you begin to heal and in the days after your injury, be sure to document everything in your journal, including:

1. New diagnoses
2. New feelings of pain or anxiety
3. Loss of earnings for each day
4. Changes in mood or behavior
5. Changes in mental health
6. Changes in your life since the injury occurred

Being as thorough and detailed as possible with this information can be the deciding factor in your settlement or final recovery amount.

While collecting evidence is essential, preserving physical evidence after an injury can be another key factor in the success of your case.

A personal injury case without evidence is much more difficult to win. If you’re looking to lose your personal injury case, avoiding collecting evidence is a great start.

How to Preserve Physical Evidence After an Injury

Physical evidence after an injury can include clothing and damaged property. To preserve items like these, don’t wash your clothes. It may sound dark, but dirt and blood stains on clothing can tell a story after an accident.

The same can be said for property. Marks, damage, and stains can all help tell the story of your injury, should your personal injury case go to trial. Even though many injury cases are settled out of court, there are cases in which plaintiffs and defendants cannot settle on terms, so it is always good practice to preserve as much physical evidence as possible after an injury.

If it drives you crazy to have damaged property on hand, take a deep breath. Washing clothes after an injury or fixing up that fence could be the difference between a jury awarding the maximum payout and a jury thinking your full of it.

What Happens if You Admit Fault After an Accident?

Never admit fault after an accident or injury. Whether you’ve fallen and hurt yourself or gotten into a car wreck, admitting fault after an injury can seriously jeopardize your case. Even if you believe your actions led to the injury, other circumstances and responsibilities are on business owners and other drivers. Witnesses to the event might have seen things you didn’t, and their statements could prove fault of another party.

Taking blame for an portion of an accident at the scene can be detrimental for your case, especially if you aren’t at fault. Don’t do that. You don’t know what was happening in the other vehicle. You don’t know if you were hit by a drunk driver. You don’t know how fast that other car was going. You don’t know how many people complained about the broken stair you slipped on. Don’t admit fault, ever.

Should I Share Details of My Personal Injury Case on Social Media?

It is never good practice to share details of an injury case on social media or with other people until you’ve spoken to a personal injury lawyer about it. In personal injury cases, all videos, emails, text messages, images, and conversations could be considered evidence, even if you’ve deleted them.

Sharing social media posts in written or video format could lead to you mistakenly admitting partial or complete fault, even if another party was acting negligent. Therefore, it’s essential to only talk to your attorney about your case until they give you the all-clear to have the discussion or spread the word.

Loose lips sink ships and destroy personal injury cases. Keep those lips zipped until your personal injury lawyer tells you it’s ok to discuss it across social media.

What Happens if You Don’t Hire a Personal Injury Lawyer After an Injury?

One of the worst things you can do is try to take on insurance companies by yourself. You may think that the initial offer they give you after an accident or injury is a good amount of money, but it’s important to know that the number one goal of greedy insurance companies is to make money. They are businesses. They prioritize their bottom line. A personal injury attorney or accident lawyer can help you get the recovery you deserve.

The best injury attorneys will review all the details of your case to find the negotiation points that they can use to take on insurance companies or large corporations. They’ve dealt with these companies before, and they won’t back down if insurance companies get aggressive. That’s what we do at Ron Bell Injury Lawyers. We fight to the end, and we’ll even take your case to trial, to ensure that you get the compensation you deserve after an accident or injury.

If you’ve been injured due to someone else’s negligence, contact Ron Bell Injury Lawyers today for your free case evaluation. 898-BELL

Don’t wait! The longer you wait to file your personal injury claim, the more money the insurance companies make. Ron Bell is ready to fight for you.