As the Supreme Court noted in Guillen, to construe § 409 to cover all facts and documents that ultimately end up in such federally mandated reports would go far beyond the congressional intent, and would hide otherwise discoverable information essential to supporting claims that could have been proven had there been no safety enhancement project:
Read MorePlaintiffs in Guillen and Whitmer brought suit against Pierce County for unsafe county roads. Dick Benedetti of Davies Pearson and I represented the Whitmer sisters whose VW Beetle was struck and knocked into a utility pole at an unsignalized intersection.
Read MoreWe were last talking about getting accident reports, so I’ll continue where I left off….
The Washington State Patrol has a statutory duty to collect and compile accident reports. WSP is a public agency. See RCW 42.56.010(1). The accident reports are public records.
Read MoreMost practitioners have no idea of the difficulty accessing something as fundamental as accident reports for a given location in a highway accident case. This is true even when the accident history is essential to a proper and complete analysis.
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