Evidence in Virginia Car Accident Cases

Gathering evidence in Virginia car accident cases may take several months or even longer. It depends on what is out there and what comes out through the course of an individual’s investigation.

Some investigations are like unraveling a sweater, pulling a little bit and they see how much they get and sometimes, it only requires a brief moment and then the string ends, and other times, it takes strategic ways to unravel.

There are a lot of cases where a little investigation is done pre-litigation. There are cases where there are mountains of pre-litigation documents that are uncovered through an experienced car accident attorney’s investigation process.

Circumstantial Evidence

The type of evidence that may be available is going to vary from case to case. Some cases may have an abundance of pictures of the accident scene either by the parties or by witnesses, or by law enforcement. Other cases may have very few pictures if any.

There may be recorded statements in some instances and not in others. Some cases may go to trial as a traffic criminal case and an attorney may have access to a transcript of that proceeding to review and to gather more information.

Either party may have even been charged with any criminal violation so there is a wide variety of different evidence that may be available and it is going to vary significantly on a case by case basis too. Some cases will have an overwhelming amount of evidence, and some cases will have virtually none.

Presenting Evidence in Court

An attorney must evaluate all the evidence before presenting it in court to determine the veracity, strength, what is going to be necessary and specifically used for, what the purpose of that evidence is, and what ends are needed to achieve it. Certain rules of evidence, fortunately, have now recently codified rules of evidence, so that means that an attorney must be bound by those rules if they intend to present documents at trial.

Gathering evidence in Virginia car accident cases cannot be simply making copies of someone’s medical bills and seeking to admit it for the truth of the matter. There is a specific statutory provision that an attorney is required to go through to authenticate that record.

The lawyer must make it relevant so there is a variety of evidentiary rules that govern what is presented at trial and an attorney will review all the evidence that is gathered, decide how it is taken with the evidentiary rules besides what would be deemed necessary to properly corroborate the evidentiary rules and be able to go from there.

Role of a Lawyer

A car accident attorney going through the investigatory process is unique to every individual case. It is possible to forecast how long gathering evidence in Virginia will take, what it may uncover, and what may or may not be there so the investigation process is very personal to the individual case and it takes as long as needs to, to find out every bit that is there and to properly present it to prepare a case.

Evidence in Virginia Car Accident Cases