In the immediate aftermath of a severe accident, your primary focus should be on your physical recovery. Because looking at photos of a crushed vehicle or heavily bruised limbs can be traumatizing, many victims quickly delete these images from their phones to “move on.” In Florida’s legal system, this understandable psychological reaction is a catastrophic financial mistake. Preserving digital evidence is the most effective way to protect your settlement value against aggressive insurance defense tactics.
The “Spoliation of Evidence” Trap
Under Florida law, “Spoliation of Evidence” occurs when a party destroys, alters, or fails to preserve evidence that is relevant to pending or foreseeable litigation.
If you delete photos of your injuries, delete text messages sent to the at-fault driver, or throw away the bloody clothes you were wearing, the defense attorney will use this against you. They can file a motion asking the judge to instruct the jury that the deleted evidence would have proven your injuries were actually minor. You must immediately back up all crash-related photos, voicemails from insurance adjusters, and repair estimates to a secure cloud drive.
Visualizing “Pain and Suffering”
When demanding compensation for non-economic damages, words are rarely enough. It is one thing for your attorney to tell a jury that you suffered a severe laceration; it is exponentially more powerful to show them a high-resolution, day-by-day photo diary of the wound healing.
Without visual proof of your physical trauma in the days following the crash, insurance adjusters will argue that your injuries “weren’t that bad” and offer a deeply discounted settlement.
Dashcams and Black Boxes
In 2026, the most valuable piece of digital evidence is video footage. If your vehicle is equipped with a dashcam, you must extract and save the footage immediately before the memory card overwrites itself.
Additionally, if the crash involved a commercial vehicle or a rideshare (Uber/Lyft), you must have an attorney send an immediate “Spoliation Letter.” This legal document formally warns the corporate entity that they are legally forbidden from deleting the vehicle’s GPS data or “Black Box” Event Data Recorder (EDR) telemetry. If they destroy it after receiving the letter, they can face severe judicial sanctions.