Attorney Jonathan Franco discusses things you should or should not do after you’ve been involved in a car wreck.
Video Transcript:This is Jonathan Franco at Haug, Farrar, Franco & Ruiz, PLLC and I’m just going to talk to you a little bit about what you need to do after a car wreck. So the first thing I would recommend is not talking to the insurance company for the adverse driver, or the at fault drivers, as we call them. They’re inevitably going to call you. They’re going to ask you “how did the wreck happen?” And sometimes it’s a relatively easy situation. It’s clear what happened. They’re going to record this regardless. This conversation is going to be recorded. And if you haven’t thought long and hard about how this wreck happened or what you want to tell them, once you’ve given it to them, its recorded, and it’s going to be used against you later if there’s any sort of inconsistency. So, I would recommend if you haven’t contacted a lawyer, and haven’t talked to him about your case, not giving the adverse insurance company a recorded statement. Now the number two thing you need to do is take pictures of your property damage, and good pictures. There’s been times where I’ve had pictures sent to me by clients that didn’t really depict the property damage. They were so close up that we couldn’t tell what happened, or they were blurry. So, make sure you get some good pictures of your property damage. Third, get your police report so we can see who was cited as at fault and various things such as what the estimated speed was and what the property damage was. Fourth you need to get a lawyer. A good lawyer will tell you whether or not you need a lawyer. It might be that the damages are so low that no lawyer is needed. But in a lot of claims where there’s an injury involved a lawyer is needed because things can get complicated. There’re healthcare liens, there’s a lot of pressure put on you by the other insurance company, and there’s a lot that a lawyer can do for you. So those are just a few things and hopefully this video was helpful.