If you want to demand damages after a personal injury accident, you need to prove that negligence played a role in your losses. For some, this is easier said than done. It may feel impossible to investigate the nature of your accident if you’re contending with severe injuries or if you have to return to work right away.
Fortunately, you can call on experienced professionals for help establishing your right to legal action. The personal injury attorneys with Vaughan & Vaughan can return to an accident scene on your behalf. You can count on us to present an analysis of on-the-scene negligence to Indiana’s civil courts. That effort can help you secure the financial support you need to recover.
Establishing Your Right to Personal Injury Damages
Your ability to prove that negligence contributed to a recent accident gives you the right to pursue compensation in civil court. More specifically, you have a legal obligation to prove that:
- A liable party owed you a duty of care
- Said party violated that duty of care
- Said party engaged in unreasonable misconduct at the time of your accident
- You have evidence of the aforementioned recklessness or misconduct
- Said misconduct resulted in your economic harm
- You can prove the value of your economic losses
If you can’t prove that negligence resulted in your personal injury accident, you may have a much harder time securing the damages you need to recover from your losses. Fortunately, our Indiana personal injury attorneys can return to the accident scene on your behalf to begin gathering evidence of another party’s misconduct.
Proving Negligence With Concrete Evidence
There are several kinds of evidence that you can use to prove the role negligence played in your recent personal injury accident. The forms of evidence that most often appear in Indiana’s personal injury claims include the following:
Bystander Statements
There’s a good chance that several witnesses saw your accident take place. While you may not be in the right state of mind to talk to those witnesses after your accident, they can play a key role in your effort to prove another party’s negligence.
If at all possible, you should gather witnesses’ contact information while you’re still at an accident scene. If you need to go with emergency responders, you can elect someone to gather this information for you. Personal injury attorneys can even contact bystanders several weeks or months after your accident to procure a description of your accident.
Unfortunately, bystander statements aren’t the most accurate form of evidence to appear in the average civil case. According to several studies, bystanders’ memories of your losses can change over time. The sooner you can get a bystander to put their memories in writing or otherwise record what they saw, the more effectively you can apply that testimony.
Physical Debris
Physical debris from your recent accident can serve several roles in your pursuit of personal injury compensation. This data can, first and foremost, help you prove that negligence contributed to your losses. Our attorneys can point to property damage and spray to elaborate on the misconduct that resulted in your personal injury.
This data can also help establish the value of your accident. If you can point to physical evidence of your losses when arguing for compensation, you may have an easier time securing the post-accident settlement that you deserve.
Expert Witness Testimony
Expert witnesses differ from bystanders. Specifically, expert witnesses do not have to be on the scene when your accident takes place to benefit your case. Instead, these parties can include the following:
- Emergency responders who assessed your post-accident injuries
- Accident recreationists
- Insurance claims adjusters
- Police
- Medical practitioners, including your general practitioner
Our team of lawyers can call on a network of expert witnesses to help elaborate on the kind of negligence that may have led to your accident. Our expert witnesses can then testify as to the severity of your accident and the identity of a liable party in your personal injury complaint. You may even call on expert witnesses in a personal injury trial, should the need to do so arise.
Video and Photo Footage
Video and photo footage of a dangerous accident is easier to obtain than ever in this age of the cell phone. Fortunately, that footage can help attorneys outline the negligence that led to your recent accident.
You can record an accident scene with your own camera immediately following a collision. You can alternatively reach out to bystanders for video or photo footage that they took of your accident while it was in progress.
Cell phones aren’t the only source of accident-related media today, though. An attorney can also pull stoplight footage, Ring camera footage, dash cam footage, and storefront security camera footage to better understand what kind of misconduct led to your personal injuries.
An Indiana Personal Injury Lawyer Can Investigate Your Losses Today
You cannot proceed with a personal injury case if you can’t prove that another party’s negligence contributed to your losses. Fortunately, you don’t have to investigate your accident without help. When the time comes, you can turn to a Vaughan & Vaughan personal injury lawyer for legal support.
Our Indiana-based personal injury attorneys can give you the space you need to recover from your accident-related losses without compromising your right to a lawsuit. We can bring your case before a judge long before your statute of limitations expires, but only if you request our representation.
Are you ready to learn more about the services that might benefit you? Contact us today to schedule your free case consultation.
