Practical Steps to Documenting Your Accident Injuries

The immediate aftermath of an automobile accident can be a traumatizing time for the person caught up in it. You could be in a state of shock and not able to tell you’ve sustained injuries, or the adrenaline pumping through your body is masking the pain you would otherwise feel. If you hire a personal injury attorney in Lakewood Ranch, FL to try and seek damages for your injuries, you should monitor and document your health issues in a journal. Here are a few key reasons why this is important.

 

Record of Evidence

 

First of all, keeping a journal of your day to day experiences with accident-resulting injuries adds vital credibility to your case. The opposing side will try to argue that your injuries weren’t as serious as you claim. Regular journal entries will help bolster your testimony. Also, if you’re suffering limited quality of life due to broken limbs or injuries that limit the use of hands, arms, legs, or other parts of the body, you have a record of pain and suffering that can help explain your health issues to a jury.

 

Delayed Health Problems

 

Sometimes not all your health issues will manifest themselves immediately after an accident. For example, if you were riding in a vehicle that hit a stationary object that caused the automobile to come to a sudden halt, the quick stop could inflict damage to the nerves inside your spinal cord. These injuries don’t show up at once, but when they do, they can cause prolonged debilitations, such as chronic pain, stiffness, or limited mobility. If you’ve been chronicling your health issues in a journal, you’ll be able to point when these health problems appear.

 

Proving Causality

 

Whether you are suffering ongoing, consistent health problems from the time of the accident or health problems developed later, you and your personal injury attorney in Lakewood Ranch, FL need to show that the accident was the cause of your medical problems, especially if the health issues did not immediately occur after your accident. Attorneys for the opposing party will claim that it’s suspicious for you to develop new health problems in a time period after the accident. By keeping a thorough record of your health condition, you can demonstrate that certain health problems surfaced on a particular date after the accident.

 

Medical Expert Witness

 

If the doctors that are currently treating you go on the witness stand, the other side’s legal term may accuse them of bias since you have an ongoing relationship with them. That’s why your personal injury attorney in Lakewood Ranch, FL will likely hire a medical expert witness, an individual who works in the same medical field as your current doctors but has no stake in the outcome of your case. Your expert witness will offer an objective viewpoint that will help convince a jury that the accident was the cause of your injuries and subsequent pain and suffering.

 

With credible documentation of the course of your physical well-being, you’ll stand a better chance of prevailing in your court case by arming your personal injury attorney with the best evidence possible to make your case.