The “Ghosts of Halloweens Past” and Your North Carolina Auto Accident Case
With Halloween now behind us, the vast stretch of the time before Christmas arrives in North Carolina. In two posts, we’re going to look backwards and forwards in time – using our current temporal location to gain interesting insights into possible points of leverage for you as a recent victim of an auto accident in Charlotte or elsewhere in North Carolina.
The “Ghosts of Halloween Past”
Whether your auto accident disrupted your Halloween, or whether you got hurt before or after the spookiest day of the year, the past is past. The accident is receding in time and in memory faster than you may realize.
Many accident victims wrongly believe that they can approach their legal situation somewhat leisurely. After all, what’s happened has happened. You can’t turn back the clock. Certainly, if you got hurt or your property got destroyed, you can’t undo the damage. It will take time to heal. It’s almost better not to rush your recovery than it is to speed things up and make poor decisions.
For instance, say you’re weighing whether to get a certain surgery for your injuries. You may want to visit two or three experts for second opinions to make sure that you’ve got the right diagnosis and procedure lined up.
Legally speaking, though, things are different. As the past “rushes away from us,” your challenges may grow at a surprisingly exponential rate.
For instance, consider the ability of a witness to recall the event. Obviously, if someone hit and hurt you, you may find it legally useful to collect favorable witness statements, verbatim, as soon as possible after the accident. Such statements should be accurate and comprehensive, pinning liability on the negligent or careless driver.
Every day that passes — in which you don’t collect verbatim witness accounts — your chances of winning your case diminish because of the diminished accuracy and usefulness of the testimony.
Interestingly, the usefulness of testimony probably does not drop off “bit by bit” and erode smoothly over time. More likely than not, it erodes in a more exponential fashion. For instance, testimony taken a few minutes after the crash, recorded verbatim via a recorder or on a police report, should carry substantial heft. That same testimony given a few hours later or few days later may still be powerful — but certainly not as powerful.
If you waited a few weeks, the odds that the witness will misremembering events skyrockets and his/her testimony will lose heft in proportion. In other words, the reduction in the utility of a witness statement may not happen slowly and linearly – it probably happens quickly and exponentially.
To make the most timely, appropriate, strategic decisions for your case, get in touch with the powerful team at the Law Offices of Michael DeMayo for a complementary evaluation of your rights and resources.
