In order to investigate a personal injury case, you really need the police report. If there is no police report, you need your client’s version of the events. There are other things involved particular to car accident cases, which you may or may not need. So, if it’s a simple case, quote unquote simple, like a hit in the rear type accident, there’s not much investigation that is necessary in order to litigate that action. You know, your car was hit in the rear. You really want to know, was the lead vehicle stopped? Was it moving? Did it stop short? And things of that nature. The police report will tell you that. Your client will tell you that.
In cases with a sideswipe or a question of lights specifically, you may have one person saying that they had the green light and the other person saying that they had the green light. So investigation might be a little more involved because you might want to canvas the area, see if there were witnesses, see if there were cameras, try to get copies of that footage to help your client’s case. That way it’s not a word versus word 50/50 liability type action. If you can prove definitively that the defendant was at fault and did run the red light.
As far as the legal process, litigation can take anywhere from a short period of time like 6 months depending on if the client is done treating at that time to 3, 4, sometimes even 5 years for a more complex auto accident type case.