Accident Report Cheat Sheet
In any lawsuit involving an MVA, one of the the most important initial tools required is the accident report. A completed MV-104A New York State Department of Motor Vehicles POLICE ACCIDENT REPORT (PAR) establishes that a) an accident did in fact occur, b) your client was somehow involved in said accident and c) the factors involved in your client's MVA. It is important for the trial professional to also have the ability, via an "answer sheet", to decode the responding officer's notes on the PAR.
The police lingo for this answer sheet is "flysheet". One simply aligns the category numbers to the correspondingly numbered areas on the actual report and from there decodes the reporting officer' handwritten digits. In the bottom right of the attached flysheet, you will note the words "Cover Sheet" and a white space below that. Generally, that space contains a letter (NYS is currently up to the letter "O") which refers to the model number of the answer sheet. The flysheet is usually only upgraded if a substantial change or category addition is required to the accident report itself. The MV-104 form is used by all New York State agencies authorized to prepare an accident report.
Labels: accident, dmv, driver, personal injury lawyer, police accident report, trial
