There are various strong reasons to hire an experienced personal injury lawyer immediately after an injury or death in a motor vehicle accident. Recovering evidence such as the 911 and ambulance call tapes and transcripts immediately is high on the list. Although the police in different jurisdictions may keep the information for different lengths of time, it can be a very short period such as three months in the City of Fairfax, Virginia (VA). The local government has some policy to throw it out at some point.
In some catastrophic truck accident cases this evidence could make significant difference in getting the maximum compensation from the insurance company for the at-fault driver and the transportation company. Sometimes there can be a question of exactly what was said by whom and when as far as the facts and causes of the wreck. In other cases, it can just be a matter of having emotionally powerful evidence about the disaster to present to the jury, if the law suit goes all the way to trial.
The point is that the average person who is undergoing a serious injury in a motor vehicle accident doesn’t know about the availability of this information and how to get these critical documents before they are lost or destroyed. Knowing the system of how and where to send a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request or a Subpoena Duces Tecum is the kind of work that those of us who specialize in trucking and automobile accident law deal with every day.
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