After sustaining injuries in a car mishap due to the fault of another party, what you should immediately do is to seek medical attention irrespective of whether the injuries are minor or severe. However, once everything calms down, there are 3 things you ought to keep to guarantee that when you file a personal injury claim, you receive maximum compensation for your injuries.
Keep the evidence
Following a car mishap, the first thing to do is to keep the evidence. Though this might seem a no-brainer, however there are some elements that you may not consider as evidence. For instance, if you're not seriously injured and you can easily do so, consider taking photographs of the scene of the accident using your smartphone. The pictures are a good source of evidence which a personal injury attorney can use in your favour when making demands to the insurance firm, or even at court proceedings, if necessary.
Names of any eyewitnesses to the mishap also serve as a piece of evidence. Moreover, keep all your medical bill receipts intact. What's more, any work excuse obtained from the hospital or physician should also be kept safely, since sometimes these aren't recorded in the patient file records. Simply get an envelope or folder and put all the above-mentioned pieces of evidence inside.
Keep quiet
What personal injury attorneys hate to hear when holding conversations with a client is that the client received a call from an insurance firm and told them the events leading to the accident. As an injured victim, the only stuff you should inform the insurance company when they call you is that you have legal representation and that they should talk to your attorney.
Why? Simply because it's not the intention of the insurance company to assist you. All they want is to obtain a recorded statement from you. The reason behind them recording your statement is because they are looking for you to mention something contradictory so they can use in trial before the jury. This explains why you should maintain your silence after a mishap. Simply put, don't talk to the insurance company or any of its representatives.
Keep a diary of events
It's very important to keep a diary of events in a personal injury case. More often than not, injured victims might think they'll never fail to recall whatever that has happened to them. However, if the case ends up in trial, and the injured victim has to give evidence in court a couple of years from now, there's a high chance that they might not recall how many days they laboured with a limp, or how long before the wounds finally healed. It is for this reason that you should keep a diary of events. All the details pre and post-accident can be captured in the journal and will help you tell your side of story to the bench.
With these three things intact and representation from a personal injury lawyer, injured victims stand a greater chance of receiving maximum compensation for their injuries.
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