The Importance of Good Photographs for You Injury Case

I used to work for the insurance companies as a defense attorney so I defended personal injury cases for many, many years all the way through trial, everything from soft tissue injuries to brain injury cases and everything in between.  Now I spend my time representing victims of personal injury accidents.  Sometimes clients call my office and they say, “Rob, I was involved in a personal injury accident.  I really don’t know what to do.”  The first thing to do is take photographs to document all the property damage.

First things first, make sure that you take photographs of every vehicle that was involved in the accident.  If you have the energy at the scene of the accident, and you have a camera or perhaps a cell phone that has a camera, a camera in it, take picture…but not only of your vehicle.  I have a lot of clients they bring me lots of pictures of their vehicle only, and that’s fine. However, if you can, take pictures of all the other vehicles that were involved in the accident as well. 

The other thing that I would add is that you should take pictures from several different angles because a picture is a static, two dimensional image.  Sometimes it’s very difficult to assess the damage just by looking at it from one angle. 

So if you’re taking a photograph, make sure to take photographs from several different angles so that you better tell the story.  If you don’t have photographs, it’s not terribly helpful when you’re trying to convince a jury or an adjuster or anybody else of the severity of the impact.  So pictures really do tell a thousand words so, to the extent that you can, take photographs.  If your vehicle has already been towed to a yard, see if you can get to that yard or have a friend or a family member go to that yard and take some pictures of your vehicle – the more the merrier.  There really is no limit as to far, as far as how many pictures are good.  Also, again, pictures of the other vehicle is very, very helpful.