Can I Dispute an Inaccurate Police Report?

Yes, you can. In fact, disputing an inaccurate police report is a good idea in cases where there are genuinely problematic and inconsistent statements made in the police report that could impact your ability to recover compensation.

Confused? Let’s briefly go through a basic overview of the police report, understand its value to a personal injury case, and take a closer look at how you might be able to dispute the police report itself.

The police report is a document produced by the officers who arrive at the scene of an accident. The report generally contains a wealth of diverse information and includes the objective details of the accident (i.e., the date and time, the exact location, the model and color of the vehicles involved and the injuries that were sustained by each party). The police report will also include photographs and a diagram of the accident scene, contact/identifying information for parties to the accident and witnesses, statements relating to the accident made by such parties and witnesses, and finally, the officer’s subjective assessment of the accident (i.e., who is at fault, what he or she believes happened prior to the accident, etc.).

Now, it may seem as though — given the substantial amount of information included in a comprehensive police report — the report is fundamental to success in litigation. That is not necessarily true, however. The state of California recognizes that the information written in the report may not meet the uncompromising need for accuracy that is required for trial litigation, and the conclusions drawn by the police officers may be biased or otherwise improperly impacted by the circumstances. As such, police reports are not admissible in court as evidence.

The Usefulness of a Police Report

So, what is the police report useful for, aside from the provision of identifying information that can help you roundup other parties and witnesses?

There are two primary ways in which the information and subjective statements in a police report can impact your case: 1) when filing a claim with an insurance company, the insurance adjuster will request the police report, and the information in that report will almost certainly be used as a “measuring stick” for evaluating the legitimacy of your claims, and 2) the police officers who completed the report can be brought into trial to testify as to what they encountered at the accident scene, thus opening up a loophole for introducing their opinions at trial.

Police officers often make errors in their police reports. After all, the evidence surrounding an accident can be scant, and there may not be many witnesses at the scene to provide clarity as to what occurred. The parties involved may be uncooperative, hostile, or simply unavailable (moved to the hospital for immediate medical care). Further, the officers may lack proper training for investigating such accidents.

Correcting factual errors (i.e., details about the date, time, or location, vehicle details, injury details, etc.) and is somewhat straightforward. With the aid of a qualified attorney, you can request that the report be modified. Assuming that you have submitted the necessary documentation to prove that your information is the correct version, the report will likely be modified accordingly.

Correcting conclusions and interpretations made by the police officers at the accident scene is more challenging. For example, one of the officers may have taken down a statement by an eyewitness that is a lie and conflicts with the real version of events. You can have the report modified, but it is quite unlikely and the decision will be left to the discretion of the police department responsible for the report. In some cases, they might allow you to submit a supplement to the police report with additional details that help to counter the damaging conclusions, interpretations, and accounts.