In case you haven’t heard, Litco Law was founded by the Litwiniuks in 1976. We still treat everyone like family, including our clients and strangers from the Internet. We care a lot, and for us that means taking the time to answer your most pressing legal questions. It’s something the Litwiniuk brothers love to do so, without further ado, let’s hear from our first Litco Bro, Todd!
What evidence do you need to file a Motor Vehicle Accident (MVA) claim?
This first question is one we get ALL the time. To be perfectly honest, the answer can vary, but we’ll tell you as much as possible here.
If you want to file a motor vehicle accident claim, there are two important questions we need to ask:
- Who was at fault?
- How bad are your injuries?
If there’s any dispute about who was at fault, or how the accident happened, we will need to do some investigative work to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Some of those pieces could include a police report, photos of the scene of the accident, traffic camera or dash cam footage, accident reconstruction, or an extraction of the black box from your car. If you’re thinking this sounds pretty complicated, don’t worry. We’ll handle gathering all the evidence needed for your injury claim.
What is an accident reconstruction and where can you get one?
That’s a great question. An accident reconstructionist is usually an engineer who attends the scene, takes photos, measurements, looks at damage to vehicles, and then uses that information to determine the force, speed, and details of impact/accident. They provide a report which will serve as an important piece of evidence in your claim. Again, this is something we’ll take care of. But we know that it often helps to understand how the process works.
Extracting a black box? What does that mean, where can I do this?
When a serious accident happens, especially with newer vehicles, investigators will usually pull the vehicle’s ‘black box’. Sounds kind of mysterious, right? The black box actually helps us solve the mystery. It’s an event data recorder that records the speed, braking force, time and deceleration of vehicle. This is a valuable piece of evidence that can help us establish (and prove) what happened.
While our legal team gathers evidence, we will also assess the severity of your injuries. We’ll look at how badly you’ve been hurt, how long you will be impacted by your injuries, and how much compensation you are entitled to receive.
In order to get a clear picture of your injuries, we will contact your medical doctors or specialists to access your medical records. This includes doctor’s visits, or treatments you had with a chiropractor, massage therapist, physiotherapist, etc. because of your accident. Our legal team will collect treatment notes from your medical providers (the notes they take when you’re there for your treatment), or a medical legal report (a report written by a medical provider that outlines all the injuries caused by your accident), and what the diagnosis (your injuries) and prognosis (the likely outcome of your injuries) is. We may also gather other information such as treatment notes from a hospital, or any other specialists you saw in connection to the accident (surgeons, psychologists, and so on).
Biggest takeaway? Don’t worry, we’ve got this. It won’t cost you anything to talk to one of our Personal Injury Lawyers. And if you do choose us, we don’t get paid until you get paid. We’ll take care of the legal work and the paperwork, so you can focus on what matters most – your health.
Want to learn more? We’ve written in-depth about MVA accidents here. Or you can give us a call or email to talk to. We’re standing by, ready to help.
