Car accidents can occur at any point in life and can be really disturbing when their consequences are seen. Also, when a case is taken to the courts, it is very much understood that the liability cannot be decided unless there is a proper explanation of the evidence given.
Evidence can be in many forms, but a lot of times, one of the aspects is neglected a lot, which is the witness statements. These are some of the credible sources that are used in liability determination cases.
An accident lawyer in Houston TX can take help from the expert witnesses when they are looking for the evidence.
Why is a Witness Statement Important?
Witness statements hold a lot of value as they can influence the car accident claims a lot.
The witness statements are able to provide the best perspectives on the accidents. These are the people that are not directly related or involved in the collision. So, their testimonies are oftentimes considered more objective in nature because they do not have anything personal to do with the accident and the case.
These eyewitnesses can also help experts in order to know the exact sequence of the event that caused the accident. These can help in telling the reconstruction specialists about the placement of the vehicles and the timing of the accident, and can also inform the experts about the negligence that they could see when the accident occured.
Witness Statements and Liability
In the establishment of the liability, the role of the witness statement holds a lot of importance. Witness statements by people who were not presently concerned about the accident give a clear understanding of events. These documents may offer useful information about the driving actions and manners of those drivers prior to the crash.
They give a more fair assessment of the case and approve or match claims presented by the parties concerned.
With that, the witnesses’ statements can make the claims of the parties that present them, and in this way, it can work best for the parties that are on the right. Also, a lot of times, the witnesses give a context to the accident that was not in the heads of people.
This additional context may help to consider whether or not the external factors were involved in the accident and if the steps of the drivers pushed it.
Value of Witness Statements
Witness statements shall meet specific conditions for admission into the court as proof. In order to be acceptable, the person who makes the witness statement, often through an attorney, must show a factual basis for its acceptability. A witness must show, on average, that he or she is aware of the facts of the statement and can testify to its exactness.
Also, the witness is able to be cross-examined by the disputing party once they have directly presented their statement in court. The lawyer shall ask the witness, under cross-examination, to question his testimony, validity, or accuracy. It may be necessary to highlight differences between the witness’s statement and that which is currently being given.
Challenges in Witness Statements
There are a lot of challenges that come with witness statements and their presentation in the courts. One of them is a bias that a lot of people question. OWitness statements can, a lot of time, be considered to be biased if there is some kind of link that the witness has with the injured party.
Also, when it comes to the reliability of the statements that witnesses give, there can be a number of factors that need to be considered. It must be seen and observed how the witness was when the incident occured, the visibility conditions at the time when the witness saw the accident, or any kind of distraction that might have caused distortion in the statement of the witness.
It must be remembered that the statements of the witness must match with what they give during the testimony and during the court case.
In order to prove that the statements have some meaning, these must be matched with the physical evidence and any other documentation that supports the exact proof.
So, with the ultimate help that the witness statement gives, it must be noticed that it comes with a number of challenges. That is why it is very important to look deeply into the statements that are offered by the witnesses, no matter how credible it look in hindsight.
Conclusion
Witness statements are one of the important forms of evidence that are used by the attorneys in order to build strong cases. These must be tested time and time again in order to check their credibility. Once they look like they can be trusted, they must be included in the court cases.
