What Happened After The Collision?

There have been many blogs written here at the Injuryboard about how early investigation can make a difference in cases. The experienced attorney will know what questions to asked and what to do. One of those questions will include whether there should be an accident reconstruction. These can be expensive, but they also can be vital to understanding what happened. Recently WCCO did an informative piece on the reconstructions that the police do.

http://www.wcco.com/video/?id=72275@wcco.dayport.com

We have used a number of different reconstructionists over time. We had one case where we did one per week before trial because a new issue had developed with the testimony of the police reconstruction. The issue was the identification of a tire mark. So we hired a stunt rider to lay down a skid at 100 miles an hour on a road we paid to have closed. It was interesting, a little scary, and absolutely vital to compare the tracks.

The advantages that the contingency system gave this client were clear. There is no way they could have fronted the costs for the test. There probably are a number of firms that would have taken the risk of not doing the testing. But many of them wouldn’t have been heading to trial either.

The WCCO story had an interesting quote:

What we like to do is wait until we get witness statements, driver statements, toxicology reports, medical examiners, coroners, all that stuff we like to have before we do our final report," he said. "We want to see the whole package before we form our opinion and put it down and live with the results.

If you let the insurance companies choose what to collect the last sentence may be far truer than you will ever know.