The Role of Police Reports in Florida Car Accident Claims

Florida car accidents can devastate your finances, not to mention your physical health. While you have the right to take legal action against a negligent driver, proving your right to damages can prove challenging without comprehensive evidence. Where can you turn if you want to build a comprehensive personal injury claim?

While personal injury lawyers in Florida can bring forward debris, vehicular data, and witness statements on your behalf, police reports can prove particularly valuable to your case. Police reports go into stark detail about the nature of your accident, offering expert input on the negligence that led to your crash. Our board-certified attorneys at Baker Legal Team can help you utilize this evidence in your case so that you can get the compensation you deserve. 

What Role Do Police Reports Play in Florida Car Accident Claims?

It’s not easy to be objective about your own accident. You’re frustrated, scared, and left holding the bag after someone else’s negligence upends your life. Police officers, comparatively, bring an objective eye to your accident. A police report can subsequently identify liable parties you may not have noticed while walking away from a crash.

Police Reports Can Outline Causation

Officers don’t have to contend with serious injuries or losses. These parties instead have the time and resources to investigate the cause of your accident. While you’re working with emergency responders, officers can:

• Gather debris relevant to your accident
• Question witnesses about what they say when your accident took place
• Gather a liable party’s insurance information
• Help you call a tow truck, if necessary

Through these efforts, officers can begin to draw a conclusion about the negligence that caused your accident. If it appears that said negligence violated the law, officers may arrest the party responsible for your accident and charge them with criminal roadway misconduct.

In many ways, an arrest makes it simpler for you to pursue civil action against that liable party. If the state finds a negligent driver criminally accountable for your accident in court, you can file that conclusion with a civil judge as proof of negligence.

Police Reports Can Speculate on Accident Fault

Identifying accident causation isn’t the same thing as identifying accident fault. For example, an investigation of the accident scene may reveal that your accident stemmed from a combination of black ice and distracted driving. You have the cause, but who specifically is liable for your accident?

A police report allows officers to speculate on the nature of fault as related to the forces that caused your accident. Using the above example, officers may speculate that fault for your losses lies with both the distracted driver and the acting car’s manufacturer.

Police Reports Contain Damage Assessments

Police reports additionally provide individuals with a perspective on the severity of the losses you endured in a car accident. These reports can include written descriptions and pictures of the damage done to your car as well as any additional property you lost in the wreck. 

Police reports may even comment on the severity of your injuries, particularly if you have to leave the scene in an ambulance. You can use all of this information to later argue for comprehensive financial support. In other words, a police report makes it more difficult for the liable party to get out of paying you the damages you deserve.

Let Florida’s Personal Injury Lawyers Integrate a Police Report Into Your Civil Claim

You have an obligation to meet Florida’s burden of proof when you bring a car accident claim forward. It gets easier to meet that burden when you can refer to a police report in your effort to assign liability for your losses. If you’re struggling to gain access to the paperwork needed to build your claim, Florida’s personal injury lawyers can help you build your case.

You can contact Baker Legal Team today to request representation throughout Florida’s civil process. We can help you integrate a range of evidence, including a police report, into your claim before you file it with a civil judge. You can contact us today at (561) 320-0000 or through our website to request a free case evaluation.