Medical reports constitute the cornerstone of personal injury claims.
Professionally documented medical evidence validates your injury claims. It proves that you, in fact, suffered the physical or emotional trauma against which you’re suing for damages.
Medical reports also spell out the injuries’ severity, a critical piece of information while negotiating maximum compensation in personal injury lawsuits.
More importantly, medical evidence helps establish causation. The report proves that your injuries were a direct result of negligence from the defendant, enabling your legal counsel to assign liability appropriately.
Read below for insights into medical evidence’s instrumental role in impacting personal injury outcomes.
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How Critical Is Medical Evidence In Personal Injury Lawsuits?
1. Validates Your Claims
Various records may be adduced to validate your personal injury claims, including photographic evidence and witness statements.
However, no document bears the credibility of medical reports.
By highlighting the diagnosed and treated issues, a medical report proves that your personal injury claims aren’t mere words. Ensure a licensed medical practitioner prepares the document to grant it legal admissibility.
2. Highlights the Extent of Injuries
Medical evidence indicates whether you suffered a minor bruise requiring a day off or acute spinal damage that could have you consigned to a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
Besides informing the next course of treatment, this information also enables your personal injury attorneys to negotiate a proper settlement.
Note that most personal injuries aren’t always immediately discernible by the victims. To assess the full extent of your injuries, a comprehensive medical report is paramount.
3. Defines the Nature of Your Injuries
Statistics point to a remarkable improvement in worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses over the years. However, there’s a need to reduce workplace incidents even further.
One way to improve workplace safety is to report all accidents, from minor slips and falls to major equipment malfunctions, to the relevant authorities. And if you, unfortunately, fall victim to these mishaps, it’s best to seek prompt medical intervention.
Medical treatments typically culminate in a doctor’s report, highlighting the nature of your injuries. The document will specify whether you sustained physical, emotional, or psychological trauma. Again, such information will be invaluable while calculating your compensation.
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4. Includes Billing Statements
Treatment costs for personal injuries can range from a few bucks to thousands of dollars, depending on the nature and severity of the injuries suffered.
Medical records capture the total expenses incurred in treating the patient, including the potential for further treatment for ongoing health issues. By indicating the treatment costs, these reports are perhaps the closest you can ever get to quantifying the emotional trauma resulting from personal injuries.
The cumulative expenses form the bedrock when negotiating settlements that reflect the full gravity of your suffering.
5. Establishes Causation
It’s one thing to suffer a devastating accident at the workplace or on the freeway. However, the real work is proving the other party’s liability.
Defendants are, by default, inclined to deny all negligence allegations. Some could even invoke the legal doctrine of comparative negligence with a view to imputing some responsibility on you. The surest way to navigate these scenarios is to obtain a medical report establishing causation.
Doctors are professionally trained to pinpoint the exact cause of injuries. Using other sources of evidence, particularly photographs, they can precisely link your injuries to the accident.
Medical reports also eliminate the existence of underlying factors that could water down your personal injury lawsuit, such as epileptic seizures and anxiety disorders. This ensures your narrative stands up to scrutiny.
6. Predicts Lost Earnings
Lost earnings are a critical concept when computing personal injury compensation. It refers to the economic losses incurred from missed work, including direct income and fringe benefits.
But like emotional trauma, the full extent of economic losses from personal injury claims isn’t easily quantifiable. So, the defendant’s legal counsel may quickly dismiss any narratives to that effect.
Fortunately, a medical doctor can estimate lost earnings using metrics such as the total duration spent in hospitalization and the cost of ongoing medical treatment.
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How Soon To Seek Medical Treatment After an Injury?
If you’ve suffered a personal injury, the first action is to contact your lawyer.
Personal injury lawyers are professionally trained to gather vital evidence from accident scenes. Your attorney may also advise on the best time to seek medical treatment, typically within 24 to 48 hours after the fact.
As already pointed out, prompt medical attention is paramount regardless of the visible injuries. It helps rule out underlying issues, such as soft tissue damage.
But even if medical evaluations uncover no life-threatening injuries, it’s important to insist on getting a detailed report. The document is, in itself, sufficient proof that the incident in question occurred. It entitles you to compensation even if the accident resulted in no significant harm.
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The Bottom Line
In personal injury claims, as with most lawsuits, the plaintiff bears the burden of proof.
Producing a valid medical report from a licensed doctor is a critical step in proving that you, indeed, suffered significant injuries from an accident. The document may also come to bear when computing fair compensation for personal injury victims.
However, medical reports don’t work in isolation. To improve the outcome of a personal injury lawsuit, you may also need to adduce evidence from other sources like audiovisual recordings, personal admissions of guilt, and witness statements.
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