Start here · 8 min read
The first 72 hours after an injury
Almost nothing that happens in the first three days feels legal. It feels medical, administrative and exhausting. But the decisions made in this window shape the claim more than anything a lawyer does in year two.
Reviewed May 2026Get assessed, and describe everything
See a doctor even if you think you are fine. Adrenaline masks injury for a day or two, and the entry made in a clinical record on day one becomes the anchor for everything that follows. When you are asked what hurts, list all of it — including the symptoms that feel too minor or too embarrassing to mention. Insurers do not treat an absent complaint as a mild complaint; they treat it as one that did not exist.
Being dazed, confused, or "seeing stars" for even a few seconds. People omit it because they did not black out. That detail can change a file from soft-tissue to possible brain injury — and it needs to be in the record, not remembered two years later.
Photograph what will not exist next week
Vehicles get repaired. Ice melts. Floors get mopped. Broken stair treads get fixed the day after someone falls on them — which is a good thing for public safety and a disaster for proof. Photograph the scene, the hazard, the surrounding context, your visible injuries, and anything that establishes conditions: signage, lighting, the state of the surface, the weather.
- Wide shots that establish where you were, then close shots of the hazard itself.
- Something for scale in the frame — a shoe, a phone, a coin.
- Your injuries as they develop; bruising often looks worse on day three than day one.
- The names and numbers of anyone who saw it. Witnesses become unreachable within weeks.
Report it properly, to the right people
Report a collision to police and to your own insurer, a fall to the property owner or manager in writing, and a workplace injury to your employer. Ask for a copy of any incident report you sign, and read it before signing. Reporting is not the same as giving a statement — see below.
Be careful with the recorded statement
An adjuster will call, usually within days, and they will be friendly. You generally must report the accident and cooperate with your own insurer. That is different from giving a detailed recorded account of how you feel and how it happened while you are medicated, exhausted and have not yet been assessed. It is entirely reasonable to say: "I want to report the accident today, and I would like to give my detailed statement once I have seen a doctor and had advice."
"How are you doing?" Answering "I'm okay, thanks" out of politeness produces a recorded sentence that will be read back to you in three years next to a claim for chronic pain. Answer accurately, not stoically.
Do not settle anything this week
Early offers arrive before anyone — including you — knows what your recovery looks like. A settlement is final and extinguishes the claim permanently, including for injuries that turn out to be worse than they first appeared. There is no cooling-off period for regret.
Assume you are visible
Surveillance is legal and routine in contested claims, and social media is the first place any defence team looks. You do not need to disappear or perform being injured. Just understand that a photograph of you smiling at a wedding will be produced as evidence, stripped of the context that you left after forty minutes and spent the next day in bed. Lock your accounts down and stop narrating your recovery publicly.
Start a file today
- A running symptom note — a line a day is enough. Contemporaneous notes carry weight that reconstructed memory never will.
- Every receipt: prescriptions, physiotherapy, parking at the hospital, mileage, equipment, help you paid for around the house.
- A log of unpaid help from family, with dates and hours. Attendant care by a spouse or parent is compensable in many claims and is routinely lost because nobody wrote it down.
- Every letter, email and form from any insurer, kept in one place, unaltered.
Then get advice — early, and without paying for it
The first consultation with an injury lawyer in Canada is almost universally free, and there is no obligation attached to it. Getting oriented early costs you nothing and prevents the small, permanent mistakes this page is about.