Sometimes the claimant in a personal injury case finds a way for the facts that were reported by an arriving officer to become a source of support. In other words, the police report has the ability to add strength to the submitted claim.
Claimants have at least 2 routes to follow, when seeking to get hold of a police report.
It is possible for the victim of an accident to call the associated police department, using a non-emergency number. Victims that have either the name of the badge number for the arriving officer stand a good chance for gaining access to what that same officer has reported.
Of course, a police department does not send out no-cost reports. All police reports’ chances for delivery to some awaiting claimant go unrealized until the same department has received the claimant’s requested fee.
How to achieve optimal utilization of a police report?
Many of the reported facts ought to belong in any potential demand letter. Personal Injury Lawyer in Richmond Hill knows that claimants that send a demand letter to the insurance adjuster gain a larger amount of control over the size of the adjuster’s initial bid.
In other words, that piece of communication manages to reduce the chances for receipt of a low-ball offer. In that way, it helps to hasten the time when the two sides agree on a suitable and fair settlement figure. Until attainment of that same agreement, the insurance company makes no effort to carry out the procedures that must precede delivery of compensation to the claimant.
Of all the facts found on the report’s pages, the most useful might be the names for any witnesses, along with their contact information. Any claim becomes stronger if the claimant has collected an impressive list of witnesses. Of course, the claim’s strength would increase further, if each witness were contacted.
The time when police reports lose their ability to support a given claim
That time would never come, if the 2 disputing parties have agreed to settle their dispute. However, if the case were to progress to the stage of litigation, the lawyer-client team would lose the ability to utilize any statement that had been reported by the arriving officer.
Judges refuse to allow introduction of any statement from an officer’s report. In fact, such a statement qualifies as hearsay in the eyes of a courtroom judge. Hearsay is the legal term for statements that do not come from an eyewitness. Remember, any officer that might have arrived in response to an emergency call has not actually seen the injury-causing incident. Hence the words of an eyewitness, while reported by an authoritative figure, are not the sort of thing that a judge would want a jury to hear.