An accident in a public place – where to collect evidence?
By Euro Claim In EN On 17th February 2015
An accident in a public place – where to collect evidence?
Accidents in public places are one of the most common types of accidents. About this kind of situation we hear every day, but we quickly forget about them, because minor injuries such as fractures or sprains are the most common – this does not exclude serious accidents, but they happen less often.
Compensation for accidents in public places are one of the most difficult, but before I tell about it, I will firstly indicate what is defined as an event of this type.
An accident in a public place occurs when a person has suffered physical damage due to negligence of the administrator or the owner. This means that this type of events can be encountered in a shopping mall, restaurant, supermarket, on the street or the playground.
The compensation can be claimed from the insurer of the administrator or the owner of the property. The person responsible for all sorts of public places has a duty to ensure the safety of people staying there.
Negligence on the part of the owner can be the lack of placement of signs informing about the slippery floor (sign must be visible from anywhere), not cleared of snow or uneven pavement.
The compensation process is individual, and the amount of obtained compensation depends on the accumulated evidence. When applying for compensation, the affected person must meet a number of important issues.
A very important thing right after the event, if there is such a possibility, is to take pictures of the accident site. If we fall on the sidewalk, twist our leg and we are not alone on the scene, we need to take a detailed picture of this place-leg in a place where there was an` inequality or hole, the way in which we got stuck, photo of our person with a foot in the hole.
If we were alone in the scene, we should carefully document our case, by taking photos. It seems that it makes no sense, but having such accurate records we can be sure that the insurance company will not reject our request for compensation. It is very useful when the pictures bear the date and time of the event.
The next important thing is to collect the data of witnesses. It is best if we have the name, phone number, address of two people who saw the whole thing and who are not related to us.
It is important to contact the police and medical services. If the police will not appear on the scene, it must make a note and give us the number of the report.
We should also contact the ambulance service. It is worth to wait for the arrival of the ambulance, and in a situation where rescuers cannot come quickly enough, and we are not seriously injured, we can go to the nearest hospital, but we have to inform that we came to them from the accident.
Police and doctors who came to the scene of accident also can be our witnesses – it is extremely useful when there were no other witnesses in the vicinity.
The next step is to obtain the data of the administrator/owner of the site of the accident. If the situation took place in the mall or restaurant, it is worth to take care of entry to the accident book.
Once we carry out all of these procedures, we have a chance to obtain a very high compensation. We have to remember than when applying for compensation for this type of event, we are able to recover the income lost during recovery, the cost of treatment and moral damages.
As mentioned at the beginning, the obtainment of compensation for an accident in a public place is not easy, therefore I think it is worth to submit the case to a law firm or a company specialized in compensations.
The advantage of this is the knowledge of the law by the institutions conducting this type of activity, therefore one can expect a much higher sum of compensation. When choosing a company, we should pay attention to the experience and the fact whether they work on the basis of the No Win No Fee principle.
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