There's a new case on the table, and it seems relatively simple.
It's a car accident that has a couple of witnesses, all of whom agree on who ran the red light. And to back all this up, there’s also plenty of evidence aside from just witness statements (e.g., photos showing damage, licence plates, participants, even an influencer ran a video shoot and managed to capture the entire event on video).
You figure this should be an easy slam dunk since there don't seem to be any complications.
Except... None of the witnesses who so confidently gave their statements actually saw the light change.
They heard the crash and made an assumption.
And the traffic camera at that very intersection hasn't been recording anything for the past 6 months, and nobody is willing to fix it. It seems the case isn't so clean after all, and piece by piece, it's falling apart.
How did it come to this when it should have been a piece of cake?
When and Where Things Start to Go Sideways
If your case is destined to fall apart, it’s going to do so in the first few hours. And after the initial slope, it’ll only get worse.
So, how does it start?
It starts with the little/subtle things (e.g., no one remembered to take witness statements, or contact numbers are wrong, or the photos were accidentally deleted, the nurse at the ER forgot to write down the correct date, etc.).
Details like these later become huge holes that create tons of problems.
If you've got witnesses included in this, it's even more complicated.
Even if there are only 2 of them, they can both have different versions of the exact same story, not because they're lying, but because they remember the incident differently.
The differences between the stories are usually very little, but not negligible, because even the tiniest one gives the defense team room to argue.
What Happens If It's Not Clear Who's Responsible
Let's say you found out exactly what happened, and now you have one less hurdle to deal with.
The next step is figuring out who's at fault. And as you already know, from years of experience in such cases, it’s almost never clear. Well, to be fair, if it were clear, then there wouldn’t be much need for lawyers, wouldn’t there?
And the fact that sometimes you just have way too many people in the mix isn’t helping anyone; in fact, it’s making things more confusing.
Here's a quick example to illustrate:
A property owner hired a maintenance company, and the company then hired a subcontractor.
All was fine until something went wrong. Naturally, no one wants to take accountability/blame, and fingers are being pointed left and right. The owner is saying one thing, while the contractor is telling an entirely different story. Nothing adds up. It’s chaos.
But in the end, there might not be a 100% fault here. Perhaps, after the dust settles, everyone’s going to be partially blamed.
If the consequences aren't visible until later, then you'll have a really hard time connecting the cause to the outcome, so that's another piece of the problem.
And outside factors don't help, either.
Bad lighting, uneven pavement, a lot can go wrong, and none of it has to be the sole cause for the issue. If that's the case, then the real cause is even harder to prove because what's the main problem here? Without it, you're in a pickle.
If the situation is more serious than a simple accident, like a wrongful death slip and fall claim, then it gets even more complicated.
You can't simply show that something dangerous existed; you need to connect it to that fatal outcome, and then show a precise timeline of how it all went down.
Why Paperwork Can Make or Break the Entire Thing
Most cases fall apart because there are some documents missing, so let's see how bad documentation (or none at all) can sink the entire case.
No Records
If nothing was written down at the time of the incident, then all you're left with is people trying to piece together a story from what they can remember.
And that's never a good thing because memory is too tricky.
Scattered Information
If you have files all over the place, then you can't see the full picture. The incident report is here. You’ve secured the video footage just today, so that’s covered as well. But the witness statements are causing you trouble. You haven’t seen them in a week. Who even knows where they ended up?
This is an excellent way to lose important details.
No Expert Input
Witness accounts are extremely useful, and the more of them you have, the better.
Still, they aren't always enough. Look at cases that include medical issues or mechanical failures of some sort; you can't go by what witnesses say alone, you need an expert to weigh in here.
Conclusion
Unless you’re expecting the case to go sideways, and you’ve taken all the precautionary measures for such a scenario, you’re basically looking at a case that’s going to implode long before you even see a courtroom or a judge.
So, what advice can we give you?
Get organized, make sure details are written down ASAP, take all the pictures you can, and work on that timeline to make sense of it.
It's no guarantee you'll win because nothing is, but at least this way you have a shot.