Santa Clara County has a system in place for supplying such documents to those that have been involved in a motor vehicle accident. The victim of such an accident can obtain the appropriate report. Still, the County does not hand out reports to anyone that has not been named in the reported incident.

Exceptions to rule against providing a report to someone that was not named in the same document:

Santa Clara county will provide an accident report to the agent at an insurance company, an employee at an agency within the County government and to the representative of someone that has been involved in a motor vehicle accident.

Who should be contacted by the person that seeks the reported information?

Anyone desiring such information should contact the Records Unit, which is located in San Jose, CA. That contact can be made in one of 3 ways:

• By going in person to that named agency
• By calling the same agency on the phone
• By mailing a request for an accident report.

What types of reports are made available by Santa Clara’s Records Unit?

• Reports on traffic accidents
• Crime reports

What information does the Records Unit need to receive, before sending-out an accident report?

• The name of the party that is requesting such a document; the address and phone number for the same individual
• The name of any other party that was involved in the reported incident.
• The location of the reported incident; the date of the same incident
• The report’s case number
• The type of report desired

Reassurance provided to those requesting a document that is on file at Santa Clara’s Records Unit

Those that process the filed documents, before sending them to the person that requested the filed papers, adhere to the regulations that have been written into California’s new privacy laws. Personal injury lawyer in Santa Clara knows that the law grants a specific right to any person that has been named in a particular document. That named individual has the right to ask for the removal of any piece of information that the named person does not want others to see.

In other words, anyone involved in an accident in Santa Clara, CA has not reason to worry about the disclosure to others of personal facts. Those same facts will be considered private, as long as the individual that was involved in a reported accident has asked that certain information get treated as private. Processors understand that private information should not be shared with others, Consequently, any private fact in a paper that was viewed by a processor at the Records Unit gets a special treatment. What is that treatment? That specific treatment removes the private fact from the processed/treated document.