Can a Police Report Be Used Against You in a Car Accident Lawsuit in Indiana?

After a vehicle accident, one of the first things you should do is call for help, including emergency medical personnel and the police. Whenever the police respond to an accident, they should write a report that includes details about the crash, how it happened, and who might be responsible. Depending on the information in the report, it might be used against you in a car accident lawsuit.

The police might uncover evidence that does not exactly make you look good. Maybe they could tell you were speeding, or they spoke to a witness who claimed they saw you run the red light before hitting the other car in the intersection. The opposing party might use this information to convince a judge and jury that you are responsible for the crash and should have to pay for their damages. If you suspect the police report contains some rather damming evidence, talk to an attorney immediately.

For a free case review to begin your lawsuit, contact our Indiana car accident lawyers at Wruck Paupore by calling (219) 322-1166.

How a Police Report Might Be Used Against You in an Indiana Car Accident Lawsuit

Whether there is a little or a lot of information in the report, using it in court can be tricky but not impossible. Generally, police reports are considered inadmissible hearsay evidence and cannot be used in the courtroom, barring special circumstances. Talk to our Indiana car accident lawyers about possible exceptions to the rule against hearsay to determine if the report might be admitted in court.

The opposing party might introduce the report, or at least portions of it, as evidence if they can show it constitutes records of regularly conducted activity under the Indiana Rules of Evidence § 803(6). This exception includes records made near the time of the accident, kept during regular business or organizational activity, and the records made as part of normal business, not special for the case.

Alternatively, the opposing party might introduce the report as evidence using the exception under § 803(8) for public records. These may be records from a public office or agency, like the police, that are part of the office’s regular course of activity, contain details about matters the office has a duty to observe and report, and factual findings from an investigation.

Despite these arguments, they are rarely successful and we are typically able to exclude the police report from evidence. However, the police officers that wrote the report or responded to the scene are still able to testify in person regarding their observations and conclusions documented in the report, so the information in the report is very important.

What Information is Contained in a Police Report for an Indiana Car Accident?

Some accidents require very in-depth investigations, and there might be a lot of potentially unhelpful information in the report. On the other hand, run-of-the-mill crashes might not receive much attention from law enforcement.

A minor rear-end crash involving no bodily injuries might be reported to the police, but they are unlikely to investigate much beyond the immediate accident scene and the basic information required to be included in a report by law. In such cases, you likely already know about the information in the police report. If the opposing party wants to use the report as evidence, they might not find it very useful.

However, some accidents are severe, and the authorities are more likely to investigate more thoroughly, especially if the responsible driver might face criminal charges and penalties. In fact, according to I.C. § 9-26-1-1.1(3), drivers in accidents involving injuries or death are required by law to report the crash to the police as soon as possible so they can investigate. If this sounds like your accident, there might be far more details in the report, and you should review it with your lawyer to determine if it can be used against you.

In addition to the report, police in serious accidents often times create detailed crash reconstructions which are not part of the publicly available police report. These often need to be requested separately, either through a public records request or, in many cases, through a subpoena. We routinely obtain this information on behalf of clients in serious accident cases.

Using the Police Report to Your Advantage in an Indiana Car Accident Lawsuit

The other driver might have plans to use the report against you in a lawsuit, but we can do the same. Review the report with your attorney as soon as it is available. If any information might help us in a lawsuit, we can determine how best to use it.

Since the report is generally considered inadmissible hearsay, we might not be able to introduce the report itself in court. However, the report will contain the information that officers would likely testify to if called as witnesses.

Additionally, the report may contain witness statements indicating the driver or cause responsible for the collision. These statements in the report are inadmissible hearsay, and we cannot use the report to get those statements into court. However, if the report contains the names and information of the witnesses who provided those statements to the police, we can find them and obtain their statement and testimony in court if necessary. Their testimony would not be hearsay, as they have first-hand knowledge of the crash.

Often times the report will not include enough detail about the witnesses to contact them without further investigation. We routinely use skilled investigators to find these witnesses and obtain the needed information. The police report is almost always the starting point for our investigations; however, it is only the beginning of a thorough effort to prepare your case.

What to Do if the Police Report for Your Indiana Car Accident Makes You Look Bad

If, after reviewing the police report with your attorney, you believe there is information that might be used against you in a lawsuit, your attorney can help you take steps to protect yourself. A good first course of action is to try and have the report excluded as hearsay evidence. Even when an exception to the hearsay rule might allow the report into evidence, it usually only applies to specific, relevant portions. We can file a pretrial motion to exclude the report on hearsay grounds and hopefully keep it from being used in court.

If the opposing party uses the report to find other admissible evidence, we have a somewhat different problem. If the evidence is admissible, it might be used in court against you. We can highlight any flaws in the evidence to undermine its trustworthiness or come up with other evidence that contradicts the evidence from the report. Almost anything is possible, and you likely have many more options than you realize.

Speak to Our Indiana Car Accident Lawyers for Help with Your Lawsuit

For a free case review to begin your lawsuit, contact our Hammond, IN car accident lawyers at Wruck Paupore by calling (219) 322-1166.