If you get in a car accident, and you decide that you need to sue the other driver, you probably will not come to such a decision lightly. You will likely realize the amount of energy and time that has to go into such a lawsuit. You will essentially need to put the rest of your life on hold until you can resolve the case one way or another.
You will need to locate and hire the personal injury lawyer who you think can do the best job for you. That probably means asking your friends and neighbors if they know any attorney who fits the bill. Failing that, you might have to do your own research online to see which law firm in your area has the best reviews.
Once you have your lawyer and you can file the lawsuit, you will need to think about determining liability. That is a crucial part of whether you will likely get any money out of the deal or not.
Car accident liability often comes into play in personal injury cases, but some people don’t fully understand how it works. In this article, we’ll discuss this concept in detail. We will also talk about some factors that typically go into determining it.
What Does Liability Mean in Car Accident Lawsuits?
The term “liability” in car accident lawsuits essentially means blame. If you’re trying to hold someone liable, then that basically means that you’re saying they caused the accident.
You can try to point the finger of blame at someone in a car accident personal injury situation, but you can also do so in many other kinds of personal injury lawsuits. For instance, if you fall down in an establishment and hurt yourself, and you did so because of a wet floor, then you would naturally try to find out who created the dangerous situation that caused your injury.
You can probably think of many other situations where you would need to try to determine liability. By doing do, you will likely win your personal injury lawsuit if you see fit to file one.
What factors might go into proving liability in a car accident lawsuit, though?
Your Testimony
If you’re trying to convince someone of something, then talking to them about it makes sense. That is true in personal injury lawsuits, just like in any other kind of argument or spirited conversation.
If you sue another driver because you allege that they hurt you through their carelessness or recklessness, then you will presumably try to produce as much physical evidence as you can. That’s one way you can attempt to establish liability.
However, you can also give testimony. If you’re sincere enough, then that might help to convince the jury that you’re right and the other driver did, in fact, cause the accident.
You should keep in mind, though, that if you give testimony, and you say one thing, and then the defendant does likewise and says the opposite, then that might nullify your testimony, at least to some degree. It may come down to who has the more convincing story.
That’s why, if you’re trying to establish liability, you ideally want more types of evidence other than just what you say happened. That’s hearsay or conjecture, whereas physical evidence will probably help you much more.
Video or Photographic Evidence
That’s why it’s always great if you can get some video or photographic evidence after a car wreck if you’re trying to prove or establish liability. Perhaps you had a dashboard camera that recorded the whole incident. You can produce that video footage and present it during your lawsuit.
If you don’t have that, then you might have video footage from a traffic camera that shows what happened. Maybe you can get video footage or still shots from a store camera nearby that happened to catch the crash.
If you can show the jury that, then it should help to convince them who’s liable. It’s hard to deny physical evidence that you can see with your own eyes.
Can You Produce Witnesses?
If you can produce some eyewitnesses, their testimony might help you as well. Maybe your car and the other driver’s vehicle collided in a place with a lot of people walking around. Perhaps you got some of their names and their contact information at the scene.
Your lawyer can put them on the witness stand and ask them what they saw. If they give testimony that confirms what you say happened, that can help you to establish who caused the accident. It’s another part of the larger puzzle that can conclusively determine liability in these types of personal injury cases.
Expert Witnesses
Maybe your lawyer can also get some expert witnesses who you can put on the stand to testify on your behalf. That’s probably not as good as having video footage or some objective eyewitnesses, but it’s still better than nothing.
An expert witness might talk about the position of the vehicles at the accident scene. Maybe you took some pictures or video of them at the crash site. Some drivers don’t think to do this after an accident, but if you did, that footage can certainly help you now.
The expert witnesses might describe how, because of the position of the vehicles and their damage, what the defendant says happened does not make any sense. They can also say that what you say happened does make sense based on what the pictures or video show.
The more evidence you can produce, the more likely you can convince a jury that the other driver caused the accident. If you can do that, it means you’ve conclusively established liability.
If that’s the case, then you should have a jury’s decision in your favor coming your way. It’s also possible that the defendant might see things going against them and offer you a generous settlement amount you can elect to take.
