When clients come to our office after having suffered injuries in a New York car accident, often their car has been totaled by the insurance company, and no photographs were taken of the damage to their vehicle. This presents two major obstacles to a successful resolution of the case. First, when attempting to resolve the claim with the insurance company, New York insurance adjusters rely heavily on visual proof of the damage to the car to determine the severity of an automobile accident. Thus, taking photographs of your car with a cell phone (not optimal but if that’s all you have, use it!), digital camera or plain old Polaroid are absolutely essential to a quick and proper settlement of your case.
Further, if the case is going to trial due to an insufficient offer or no offer at all from the insurance company, those photos showing the smashed in hood or crushed fender go a long way in convincing a New York jury that your injuries were caused by this car accident, and not a degenerative spine or a fender bender twenty years ago.
Photographs are also tremendously effective in convincing jurors that the defective stairs or broken sidewalk did cause your accident in trip and fall cases.
In all types of New York injury cases, whether by automobile accident, slip and fall, or a construction accident, to use three examples, photographs showing your scars, fractures, or burns are particularly powerful with insurance adjusters at the claim level and very persuasive with jurors at trial.