Stonecrest, GA Car Accident Lawyer

Car accidents are one of the most common ways to get injured in Stonecrest. However, you have a right to get compensation if another person is responsible for your injuries.

Filing a lawsuit is the best way to get justice for the damages you suffered. Our attorneys can help you prepare your claim, including gathering the evidence you need to prove the elements of your case. Our team knows where to find this evidence and how to use it during negotiations. We can use accident reports and your testimony to establish the defendant’s negligence. We will also use your medical records to substantiate your injuries. With this evidence, you can get coverage for not only your current losses but also future damages your injuries will cause.

For a free case review with our car accident attorneys, call Rice, Murtha & Psoras at (470) 287-3070.

Proving Your Car Accident Claim in Stonecrest, GA

To recover compensation after a car accident, you need to be able to prove your claims. To prove your claims, you need evidence. Our car accident lawyers can help by gathering the evidence we know wins cases. Some of the evidence will be used to prove how the accident came about. Other pieces will go towards proving the other driver’s liability. Most importantly, you will need evidence that proves the damages you have sustained. Our team can help you obtain the following evidence to prove your lawsuit in Stonecrest:

Medical Evidence

The backbone of almost every car accident claim is medical records. Without medical evidence, you will have no way of conclusively proving your damages. Your medical records will demonstrate the severity of your injuries and the steps you have taken to recover. If you have seen multiple healthcare providers for treatment, your medical evidence will tell your story.

Therefore, it is imperative that you get medical care following your car accident. You also need to stick to your treatment plan without missing steps or appointments. The insurance company will be looking for reasons to deny you compensation, and waiting too long to get medical treatment or not following through with it can give them the ammunition they need.

You might already have some of your medical records with you at our first meeting. It is common to leave the emergency room with your ER report. However, we are not expecting you to have or gather your medical records. Our team will reach out to your providers on your behalf to get the documents.

Physical Evidence

Sometimes, physical evidence can help prove your claim. For example, your phone might have been smashed, or other personal effects were damaged. This can help illustrate the severity of the accident.

However, much of the physical evidence will be at the scene of the accident. This includes damage to your car, the other driver’s vehicle, and debris in the road. The problem is that you obviously cannot bring those into court. Fortunately, you can use photos to preserve this evidence. Thus, take numerous pictures following your crash. Be sure to get photos of the scene itself, including traffic signals, road conditions, intersections or side streets, and anything else you feel is relevant to the case.

Once the scene is cleaned, much of that evidence will be gone. Still, our team will go out to the scene when we do our investigation to check for other evidence that could be helpful.

Surveillance Camera Footage

Security camera footage has been utilized as evidence of a car accident much more in the last few years. Nowadays, security cameras are fairly affordable, and their size makes them relatively easy to install just about anywhere. If your accident happened in a commercial or industrial section of Stonecrest, several nearby businesses could have security cameras that captured your crash.

Your accident might also be on video if it happened in a residential area. Many homes now have doorbell cameras installed at the front doors to see who is there and monitor package theft. These cameras usually have a fish-angled lens that allows them to see a panoramic view of the road. If your accident happened in front of a home with a doorbell cam, there is a good chance that some of it is on video.

Dash cams have also become popular in recent years. Drivers install them on their dashboards to record the road ahead and to help protect against liability. If you had a dash cam on when the accident happened, we could use that footage to prove the other driver’s liability. If the other driver had a dash cam, we will demand that evidence from their attorney during the discovery phase of your case.

Witness Testimony

Witness testimony can be pivotal in proving a car accident claim if you have it. Witnesses can provide views of the accident that you could not have seen. When their perspective on events shows the other driver’s negligence and lines up with your version of the accident, it adds credibility to your claims. In most cases, witnesses are strangers to the parties involved in an accident claim, so they have no reason to lie on a plaintiff’s behalf.

If you did not speak to any witnesses while you were still on the scene, we can help determine who they are and how to contact them. Our lawyers can typically do this by reviewing the accident report from the police.

Accident Reports

When a car accident happens in Stonecrest, the police will usually respond to investigate the crash. During their investigation, they will speak with you, the other driver, and witnesses who stopped to help, if any. They will include the names of those they spoke with, as well as insurance information, addresses, and other contact information that can help our team.

The investigating officer will also record their observations in the report. They will usually note the details of the accident scene, including where the vehicles came to rest and the debris from the accident. The report will also include whether a citation was issued to the other driver. In many cases, the report will also include a diagram showing the layout of the accident scene and where everything was when the police arrived.

Unfortunately, police reports generally cannot be admitted as evidence. However, this rule only applies to evidence in a trial. A report has several uses in insurance negotiations, including proving liability. In most cases, the insurance company needs a police report to process a claim. If the police report makes the other driver’s negligence hard to argue against, we will likely settle your case long before a trial is needed.