Common Mistakes in a Car Accident Case

Answer:

Clients sometimes do not do the best things that will help their case. One of the common things that we see is, after a car collision, they don’t go to the doctor because they don’t think they’ve been hurt. Many times, people get hurt in what is known as a soft tissue injury where their muscles been damaged or their discs between their backbone have been hurt. Those types of injuries sometimes don’t come up for several days. When you’re in a collision, many times your adrenaline just goes off the chart and you don’t feel the injury. Whether you do or whether you don’t, go get checked out. In Florida, if you don’t get checked out and see a doctor for treatment within 14 days, you lose your right to have your own PIP or no-fault insurance pay for those bills. That could be a kick in the stomach to your situation.

Another mistake we see is people don’t get a hold of a lawyer. A lawyer can do many things in preservation of evidence, particularly here in Nassau County. State road 200 is the east-west main artery, only artery from I95 onto Amelia Island. It is under construction. It’s been under construction for several years. It will be under construction for many years to come. The makeup of the lanes change, sometimes on a daily basis. If you get a hold of a lawyer, a lawyer knows to go preserve the evidence, go out and take photographs of the accident scene because it’s going to change, particularly up here.

Cars get repaired. Another mistake we see is clients don’t get pictures of the damage to their car. Without it, although it’s not fatal, it weakens your case. You’ve heard the phrase a picture is worth 1,000 words. That is particularly true in courtrooms. Jurors love to see pictures. With it, we can extrapolate your damages and your injuries. If we have it, it’s a great tool. If we don’t have it, it’s one less tool in our toolbox.

Those two things are the primary mistakes that we see. That clients don’t get treated and they don’t preserve their evidence by taking pictures of the scene and pictures of the car. If you contact us early on, we can navigate you through those mine fields. We can preserve the evidence so that we can maximize the value of your case. If you’ve been hurt in Nassau County, Duval County, or northeast Florida, give us a call. We’ll be happy to sit down with you, go over things, and see how best we could help you.