Posted in Personal Injury on May 11, 2016
If you live in Denver, CO and you suffered a serious personal injury in a slip and fall accident or in a car accident but there are no witnesses to corroborate your story, will you lose your case or will you have to settle for less? This is a common concern among accident victims, but at Zaner Harden Law, we have years of experience assisting clients in a variety of injury matters and can discuss your options with you for seeking compensation. While it can be helpful to have third-party witnesses to an accident, it is not necessary to have witnesses in order to win your case.
If you were injured in an auto accident caused by a negligent driver, it is important to call the police to report the accident. Why is this such an important step? Even if there were no witnesses to your accident, the law enforcement officials who arrive at the scene can provide you with a police report, which may assign fault to the other driver. Information about accident reports in Colorado can be found on the website for the Colorado Department of Revenue and the Division of Motor Vehicles.
Even if there were no third-party witnesses to your accident, there are many ways to prove that the other party is liable for your injuries. One of the best ways to collect evidence of the other party’s negligence is to take photographs at the scene.
After a car accident, you should take as many photographs as possible of the crash, including the area of the street around where the collision occurred. You should ensure that you take photographs from multiple angles, too. Your Denver car accident lawyer can work with an accident reconstruction expert to prove that the other driver was at fault just by looking at the way in which the vehicles ended up and where skid marks appeared on the road.
And if you do get hurt in a slip and fall accident, it is important to think about taking out your phone and snapping some photographs of the scene. Was there a puddle on the floor that was not cleaned up quickly? Was there a snag in the carpet that the business owner failed to repair? Take a picture of it and save it in your phone. Those photos can go a long way toward proving the business owner’s liability in your premises liability lawsuit.
If you slip and fall at a local place of business, there might not have been a third-party witness to the accident, but there may have been a witness to the condition that resulted in your slip and fall. According to a fact sheet from the National Safety Council, there are many dangerous conditions of which business owners should be aware and should act quickly to remedy. For instance, if an employee or a customer spills a liquid on the floor, it should be cleaned up shortly. Or, if a business owner has a piece of rough flooring on which a customer could trip, the business owner has a responsibility to repair the area.
There is a possibility that an employee noticed the dangerous condition—and perhaps even reported it to a manager or to the business owner—before you slipped and fell. As such, this kind of witness could be just as important to your case as a third-party witness.
Just because there were no witnesses to your accident does not mean that you cannot be eligible for financial compensation. If you got hurt in an accident, an experienced Denver personal injury attorney can discuss your options with you. Contact Zaner Harden Law today to learn more about how we can assist you.
