Recorded Statements in Auto Accident Collisions
Hi, Hector Quiroga here with Quiroga Law Office. Today I’d like to talk to you about recorded statements.
This is a process in which an individual gets in a vehicle accident whether he’s at fault or not and an insurance company will call them and say, “We would like to take your recorded statement”. Well, sometimes, I get a call. Do I have to do this? Is that something that the adjuster can do? Is that something that they can ask me for? And, um, here is my, my short answer.
The reality is – there is no duty for you to acquiesce or agree to a interrogation that is going to be recorded by anybody. You have to agree to that. It’s not in your policy. Your policy does not state that you must agree to a recorded statement. What a policy says is that you must cooperate with the insured, with the insurance company, with the carrier and to be able to help them advance an investigation.
Now cooperation does not mean a recorded statement. So why do they want it, is the question. Well, usually they’re going to use this against you. They’re going to try to say, “Well, you have a recorded statement”. And in that statement you say X, but it turns out that he wasn’t X, he was Y. There was really no real reason why an individual would give a recorded statement, other than with the knowledge that they’re going to be impeached or they’re going to be asked later on. Well, this is what you said, and we’re going to corroborate with that.
So I think that’s the way they use it, there’s no one good reason why you need to do that. You can give what we call a written statement, or basically an auto statement. You can talk to the adjuster, you can tell them what happened, you can tell them your account of what happened, but it doesn’t have to be recorded. And that’s one of the things that they are gonna make it look like.
Well, it’s a common practice, we have these recorded statements all the time and this is what I need to complete my investigation is to have you on a recording. That’s incorrect. That is not what is required. All you’re required to do is cooperate with the investigation and you are able to do that without a need for a recording of any kind.
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