Yes, you can still make a claim. The absence of a police report does not eliminate your legal right to seek compensation for injuries caused by someone else’s negligence, and no Missouri statute or insurance policy provision makes a police report a condition precedent to filing a personal injury claim. What the absence of a […]

If you are asking this question, there is a good chance you already waited. The accident happened, you felt okay or close enough to okay that a doctor visit seemed unnecessary, and now some days have passed and something has changed, either in how you feel or in your understanding of what the claim process […]

The accident is over. You have exchanged information, maybe spoken to a police officer, maybe sat with the adrenaline for twenty minutes while someone took photographs of the vehicles. And now, standing at the side of the road or driving slowly home, you notice that you feel okay. Not great, probably, but functional. Nothing is […]

Yes. Every time, without exception, as many as you can take before the scene changes. But the more useful question is not whether to take photos. It is which photos, in what order, of what specifically, and why certain images matter so much more than others to what happens to your claim six months from […]

It happens more often than people expect, and it almost always sounds reasonable in the moment. The other driver gets out of their car, surveys the damage, and suggests that you two just handle this between yourselves. No police report. Exchange insurance information, maybe take a few photos, and both go on with your day. […]

The accident just happened. Your car is stopped somewhere it was not supposed to stop, and the decision you make in the next thirty seconds will feel obvious later whichever way it goes and will feel impossible right now. Move the car or leave it. The other driver is out of their vehicle. Someone behind […]

The first minutes after a car accident are the ones that matter most and the ones for which almost nobody is prepared. The adrenaline is real, the disorientation is real, and the decisions you make before you have had any time to think will have consequences that extend for months. People who know what to […]

Most people understand that what they say to an insurance adjuster matters. Fewer people understand that the conversation with the adjuster is only one of a dozen contexts in which talking about their injuries can help or harm their claim. The way you describe your condition to your doctor, the comments you make to coworkers […]

The way you describe your injuries to an insurance company will follow you through the entire life of your claim. That is not a figure of speech. Every description you give, in a recorded statement, in written communications, in a claim form, or in casual conversation with an adjuster, becomes part of a file that […]

Yes. You can have a lawyer present during a recorded statement to an insurance company, and in most circumstances involving serious injuries or any genuine uncertainty about liability, you should. The insurance company cannot refuse to conduct a recorded statement with your attorney present, and they cannot condition your claim’s processing on your agreement to […]