When you are injured in an accident caused by another party, you may be entitled to recover compensation for your damages. However, defendants and their insurance companies won’t just hand over the full value of your case because you ask for it. You must be able to prove that the defendant is liable, as well as the value of your damages.
To prove your claim, you need evidence, and you need an experienced Denver personal injury attorney who knows how to preserve, uncover, collect, and present that evidence to help you secure maximum compensation for your damages.
The Denver personal injury attorneys at Dan Caplis Law have been protecting the rights of injury victims and their families for over forty years and have achieved record-setting results for our clients. We want to help you obtain the justice and compensation you deserve. Call (303) 770-5551 or visit our contact page and schedule a free consultation to discuss your personal injury claim.
How Is Evidence Used in Personal Injury Claims?
In a Colorado personal injury claim, you must prove the elements of your legal theory. Most personal injury claims are based on negligence. In a negligence case, you must prove that four elements exist:
- The defendant owed you a duty of care.
- The defendant breached that duty of care by their action or inaction.
- The defendant’s breach of duty was the cause of your injury.
- You suffered damages that were caused by the defendant’s breach of duty.
To establish each of these elements, you will need to submit evidence. For example, in a car accident case, you could easily prove that the defendant owed you a duty of care because all drivers owe a duty of care to operate their vehicles safely to avoid causing harm to others.
However, the second element—that the defendant breached their duty of care—is more challenging. How do you prove that the defendant breached their duty of care? You need evidence to show what the driver did or did not do that was a breach of their duty to operate their vehicle safely. Perhaps you can prove this with dash camera footage, or other video evidence, eyewitness accounts, police report, event data recorder information from the vehicles involved, or expert testimony from an accident specialist.
The third element requires you to submit evidence that the defendant’s action was the cause of your injuries. To do this, you need to establish that you would not have been injured “but for” the defendant’s negligence and that your injury was a natural and probable consequence of the defendant’s conduct and reasonably foreseeable.
This is not always straightforward. Just because you can show that the defendant, for example, failed to yield the right-of-way, does not necessarily mean that failing to yield was the sole cause of your injuries. You must be able to link the defendant’s negligence to your injuries with evidence to support your claim.
For example, was someone else responsible for the accident that led to your injuries, did you contribute to the accident in any way that would have contributed to your injuries, or did something happen after the accident that contributed to your injuries.
Finally, you must prove that you suffered actual damages because of the accident caused by the defendant. You could prove this using evidence such as your medical expenses, lost wages, testimony from friends or family regarding your pain and suffering, and medical expert testimony about your injuries to establish the existence and value of your damages.
What Type of Evidence Is Needed in Personal Injury Claims?
The type of evidence needed to prove your personal injury claim depends on the facts of your case. Some common types of evidence used include:
- Physical evidence, such as torn and bloodied clothing or damaged personal items.
- Photographs and video footage of the accident scene, your injuries, or the defendant’s actions.
- Witness accounts of the accident or incident that caused your injuries.
- Witness accounts of your injuries, loss of enjoyment of life, and pain and suffering.
- Medical records, operative reports, imaging (X-ray, MRI, CT) may be used as evidence to prove the existence and severity of your injuries. Including prior medical records for comparison.
- Expert testimony, including medical and economic witnesses regarding your damages, and other experts to establish facts about the accident or incident, such as an accident reconstructionist.
- Police reports from the responding and investigating officers, along with their body worn camera footage.
At Dan Caplis Law, our personal injury lawyers in Denver work diligently to uncover the most substantial evidence to support your claim and carefully choose each piece of evidence.
How Do You Preserve and Collect Evidence in a Personal Injury Claim?
Our Denver personal injury attorneys take prompt action to preserve evidence by issuing preservation letters to notify parties and custodians of potential evidence that they must maintain in anticipation of litigation. When necessary, we will work with engineers to reconstruct the accident scene, take photos, aerial images, and download data from the vehicles when appropriate.
We will also issue formal discovery to identify and collect evidence, issue subpoenas for the production of evidence at specific stages of the claim when necessary, and take depositions of parties and witnesses to prove your case when appropriate. Our attorneys conduct a thorough investigation of each accident or incident and leave no stone unturned to uncover evidence to build your strongest case and help you secure maximum compensation.
Contact Dan Caplis Law To Discuss Your Personal Injury Claim
The personal injury lawyers at Dan Caplis Law have the skills and experience to preserve and collect the evidence needed to prove each element of your case and help you secure maximum compensation for your damages. We want to help you get the justice you deserve.
Call (303) 770-5551 or complete the short form on our contact page and schedule a free consultation to discuss your personal injury claim.