The Organic Law 1/2015
of reform of the Penal Code, will come into effect on July 1st. Many of our clients ask us, as a law firm specializing in traffic accidents,
how will this affect traffic accidents with injurious outcomes?
Well, in the new Penal Code all criminal offenses will be eliminated. This will lead to the disappearance of the possibility of processing misdemeanor trials in cases where there are injuries due to minor negligence, so the only possibility for a criminal procedure will be the existence of negligence "of a certain entity" by the driver causing the accident. With the new reform of the Penal Code, serious/minor negligence is replaced by serious/less serious negligence, and in these cases of less serious negligence, they would be limited to cases causing injuries of certain severity, so the Judge, when faced with a criminal complaint for a traffic accident, must consider these elements when initiating or filing a procedure. Thus, those serious negligences that result in fatalities or permanent injuries can be unequivocally classified as crimes and therefore can continue to be treated through the criminal route. However, negligences such as rear-end collisions may be excluded from the criminal route in most cases, being limited, in any case, to the decision of the criminal investigating judge, who once the complaint is received must ultimately decide whether or not, and to what extent, there is a negligence that can be criminally classified by an involved driver.
However, we understand that in judicial practice and given the founded fear that traffic accident victim groups have that this new regulation means a general decriminalization of accident perpetrators and therefore the only way to claim compensation is through the civil route, it will be possible for the Court to process any complaint as preliminary proceedings so that the victim is recognized by the Forensic Doctor as we understand the latter is the most suitable and impartial expert to determine if the injuries suffered by the victim are serious or minor and once the Health Report is issued, the Court will determine based on it whether the accident was caused by serious or less serious negligence and if it is the latter option and the injuries determined by the Forensic Doctor are minor, the Procedure would be filed, but we insist with minimal procedures that avoid the cost that would entail the need to prove the injuries with a party expert in the civil route with the expenses that this would imply for the victim, and in other cases, it would continue as an Abbreviated Procedure.
In any case, the good news is that if the only possibility is to resort to the civil route, most auto insurance policies include legal defense coverage that covers an amount for each process intended to address the legal expenses arising from it, including expert fees. Therefore, our advice as a law firm specializing in traffic accident compensation, is that after the reform of the Penal Code special attention should be paid to the terms of such coverage when contracting your insurance.
Finally, we recommend those clients who have suffered an accident to consult as soon as possible with our Azucena Librán law firm BEFORE July 1st, since the reform of the penal code includes a transitional provision that establishes that all misdemeanor trials that are in process before that date must continue until completion,
```
