Dos and Don’ts When Filling Out Accident or Incident Reports

If you have a physical business with an actual physical office or location, it’s a matter of time before there is an injury on your property. The victim may be an outsider, like a customer, or one of your own employees. But regardless of how it happened and who it happened to, any type of incident on your property requires a good and thorough accident report.

Why Fill One Out?

Many business owners may ask why they should fill out an incident report. After all, doesn’t that just give the victim “ammunition,” in the event that the victim sues you for injuries? Why give the victim more information to sue you for than you have to?

One reason why incident reports are necessary is for your own liability insurance; your insurer may require that incident reports be taken, and even if they don’t, they will look at your incident report to see what happened when defending your claim. Insurers won’t take kindly to insuring companies that refuse to take incident reports.

The incident report lets everybody in the company know what happened — if the owner or CEO or manager wasn’t there at the time of the accident, he or she now has an accident report to tell her what happened.

Additionally, incident reports are generally considered to be work product. That means it is a document prepared in anticipation of litigation and thus, the victim, should he sue, can not obtain this report anyway, so you don’t have to worry about the report being “used against you.”

What to Include

Employees should be trained to describe in detail what they observed when they came to the scene — even if there are also photos (which should also be taken as part of an incident report).

If the victim is able to, your employee should speak to the victim about what happened, being mindful that the victim may be in pain or distress so employees should not be overly pushy.

If there are any witnesses in the area, your incident report should get their contact information, and if possible, a short explanation of what they observed happened.

Employees responding to an accident will take some action — for example, calling an ambulance — and that should be in the accident report as well.

What to Leave Out

Do not, in the accident report, come to any opinion or conclusion as to how the accident happened or who was at fault (you can write if a witness said how an accident happened, and describe what the witness says he or she saw, just don’t come to your own conclusions in the incident report).

Never suggest what should have been done or could have been done or what was done correctly or incorrectly, and don’t ever insert opinions into the incident report (for example, “victim doesn’t look that injured”).

Not Just Accidents

Remember that incident reports aren’t just for accidents. They can also include threats that happen on your property, exposure to toxins, belief that a crime has been committed, or reports of harassment or employment discrimination.

There are ways to avoid lawsuits. Let us help your business avoid legal problems. Call our West Palm Beach commercial litigation attorneys at Pike & Lustig to help you.

Source:

nso.com/Learning/Artifacts/Articles/Are-You-Filing-Incident-Reports-Properly