When you suffer injuries in a Louisiana accident, by law, you are required to contact the police and provide them with information about your accident to make a police report. Without filing a police report, determining liability with your legal representative can be difficult, and you could miss out on compensation.
At Laborde Earles, our team of Lafayette car accident lawyers explains the risks of making a car accident claim without a police report and how our team, with over 250 years of combined personal injury experience, can help you. We offer a free case consultation where we can answer any questions you have.
What Are the Laws Surrounding Police Reports in Louisiana?
In Louisiana, some laws require you to contact the police after you’ve been injured in a car accident, there is a death, or if the property damage exceeds $500. According to Louisiana Revised Statutes 32:398, when the police arrive, you must provide the following information:
- Name
- Address
- Registration number of the vehicle
This information is used to report the accident and make other officers aware of the crash, but also to provide you with an account of the accident. If you fail to file a written police report within 24 hours of the crash, you could risk being fined $100 and going to jail for 60 days. Either way, it’s in your best interest to file a police report.
Laborde Earles injury was great for me they took care of me very fast and professional. If for any reason I need legal help they will be who I use.
ClientWhat Information Does a Police Report Contain?
When an officer creates a police report, they record valuable information that our Lafayette car accident attorneys can use to create a strong case. If you try to make a car accident claim without a police report, you’ll be missing essential information. Some of the information that a police report often has includes:
Driver, Witness, and Vehicle Information
The police report contains contact details for drivers, passengers, and witnesses. A car accident lawyer can use these details to interview all involved parties. Speaking to witnesses in car accident cases allows the lawyer to collect additional testimony to support your version of events.
Injuries Sustained
The report documents any injuries the responding officer observed or was told about by the involved parties. Even relatively minor injuries have value as contemporaneous medical evidence created close to the event. This aids our attorney in arguing the accident was the definitive cause of subsequent treatment required rather than any pre-existing or unrelated conditions.
Records of immediate injuries are useful for establishing a baseline for damages being claimed further down the line. We form an independent, disinterested foundation regarding your health status prior to full medical evaluations. This makes it more difficult for negligent parties to deny later or downplay the long-term effects and treatments required from the trauma of the collision.
Accident Narrative
The officer provides an objective timeline of how the accident occurred based on the available evidence. This narrative establishes the sequence of events, speeds, road conditions, and actions of drivers who broke traffic laws.
Multiple aspects, like when airbags were deployed or where cars came to rest after the collision, corroborate the accuracy of this objective account. This is helpful when a lawyer needs to prove someone was speeding in an accident.
Diagrams and Scene Information
Sketches of the road, markings, and vehicle positions help corroborate testimony. Including details like lengths of skid marks, gouge patterns in the pavement, and final rest positions assist reconstruction experts. Accident diagrams drawn to scale depict the collision’s point of impact.
Debris fields pinpoint where parts started separating or undercarriage components hit the road. This evidence in the report supports the chronology by showing the incident’s initial point of impact versus secondary collisions.
I thank God for Digger & David. I don’t know what we would have done if it hadn’t have been for them.
Rick Smith | ClientWhy Are Police Reports Important in a Car Accident Claim?
Police reports are a significant piece of evidence you need to have when you file a Lafayette car accident claim. A police report helps:
Determine Liability Determination
One of the most important reasons you should have a police report after a Lafayette car accident is to help determine liability. While our car accident lawyers at Laborde Earles help put together evidence to determine liability, we don’t decide liability just based on our experience. To determine liability, we often look at the police report for guidance.
In addition to the information a police officer writes on the police report, such as the location and position of the cars, police officers may provide their personal and expert observations. By having expert observations, you and your lawyer have additional evidence to use to determine liability in the accident.
The independent, disinterested perspective of a law enforcement officer investigating the crash adds validity to foundational facts like fault determination. The police report forms a solid basis the insured motorist can rely on to maintain the accurate fault assessment if the other driver tries to waver on their admitted responsibility for causing the accident during settlement talks.
Protects Your Compensation
A police report forms an official, documented record of the accident details. This is important if the other driver later tries to deny fault or change their story. The report presents an unbiased, factual account established at the scene before either party had time to coordinate false narratives.
If the at-fault driver seeks to shift blame to the insured party, the police report can effectively refute those attempts. It establishes a paper trail showing what information was provided at the beginning rather than allowing conflicting details to be fabricated after the fact.
Negotiating With the Insurance Company
Another benefit of having a police report when making a car accident claim is that it can help strengthen your position when negotiating with the insurance company. The independent and objective documentation helps establish fault, and details of the incident and corroborates your account of what occurred.
Insurance companies are more likely to approve coverage and fairly evaluate claim value when presented with a police report as supporting evidence. Without one, they may try to deny the claim by arguing fault cannot be definitively proven.
Some reasons an insurance provider could use the lack of a police report as grounds to deny covering a claim include:
- Saying fault cannot be conclusively determined without neutral third-party documentation.
- Arguing that insufficient evidence was collected at the scene to validate your side of the story.
- Raising suspicions that the accident did not actually occur as described without timely official verification.
- Claiming that damaged property details were not properly recorded and substantiated.
- Refusing to compensate what they deem as an unsubstantiated injury claim without medical records from the date of the incident.
Making a car accident claim without a police report that contains valuable information can be detrimental to your case and your compensation.
The reassurance from Digger and his staff gave me that renewed hope that it’s going to be okay down the road.
ClientLearn More About Making a Car Accident Claim Without a Police Report
At Laborde Earles, our team of Lafayette car accident lawyers is ready to help you file your car accident claim. If you have any other questions about the risks of filing a car accident without a police report, our team can help you.
Contact us to learn more about how our team can help you file a car accident claim.
