VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone. This is Robert Mansour, and today I wanted to shoot a brief video on the importance of taking photographs of your injuries. I recently had a client who was involved in a head-on collision. He's a 21 year-old gentleman, and he had some bruising to his knees and some bruising to his chest and to his hands, both in the palms of his hands and on his knuckles. He told me all about this bruising, and he explained it to me and it sounded really bad, but I told him, I said, "Did you take any photographs of your injuries?" He said, "Oh no, I forgot to do that."
 
Now, by the time he came to see me, all the bruising was gone. Now, why is it important to do that? Here is why. When you are dealing with an insurance adjuster, who is working for the other party in your case, you want to be able to tell the story as best you can. Now, you can tell somebody about your bruising, and you can point to some medical records that indicate bruising, but that's not quite as effective as showing someone. Show me, as the phrase goes. Show me, so I can believe it.
 
The truth of the matter is, many of the insurance adjusters are skeptical. There's a lot of people out there trying to game the system, trying to embellish their case, but if you can show somebody visually the injuries that you had, it is much more compelling that simply pointing to a notation in a medical record somewhere.
 
If you are injured in an automobile accident, make sure not to just take pictures of the vehicle. The vehicle is important, but you also want to document any and all physical manifestations of injury, bruising, scratches, redness. No matter how minor, take a picture. Have somebody in your family take a picture from several different angles as well and different lighting conditions. Sometimes a bruise may not show in a particular lighting condition, but perhaps from another angle or a different lighting condition, it does show better.
 
I cannot overemphasize the importance of taking pictures of your physical injuries after an automobile accident. Thank you very much for watching.  Please call (661) 414-7100 to see if we can help with your injury case.

When it comes to personal injury cases, I cannot stress the importance of photographs enough. Most people don't seem to understand why photographs are important when it comes to accident cases. The old adage holds true - a picture speaks a thousand words. This is extremely true when it comes to proving your accident case. 

You're probably not going to have a camera with you at the time of the accident. However, many cell phones now have the ability to take decent pictures. Take pictures of the damage to your vehicle. However, don't forget to take pictures of the damage to all other vehicles involved in the accident. Also try to take pictures of the scene if you can. It is very important when he comes to convincing in insurance adjuster that your accident involved more than a minor bump. 

If you take pictures with your cell phone, make sure you know how to get the photos off your cell phone. In many cases, you can email the photos to yourself and download them to your computer. You can also email them to your attorney or burn them onto a disc. When taking photographs, it's important to take photographs from every conceivable angle. Take pictures of the left side, the right side, from above, from below, from various distances, etc. Don't just take a close-up of the damage because that will not convey the entire story. Remember, in many cases you'll be trying to convince an insurance adjuster that this accident was more than minor. They will do everything they can to minimize your claims.  You need to do the opposite - everything to maximize your claims.  If the accident was major, you definitely want to document that fact using photographs.