If you slip and fall, and no one was around to see it, do you have a case? When two stories are equally believable, how can a jury tell which one is correct? Security footage and surveillance video can make or break a case in surprising ways.
Security video is often one of the best objective pieces of evidence to show a jury in an injury case. It also often ends the case quickly with insurance companies, who will be reluctant to take a case to court when there is video of their policyholder causing the accident. The two situations where it can help most, though, are when there are no other witnesses to the injury or when all you have is your story versus the defendant’s.
For a free case evaluation, call The Queenan Law Firm’s Texas personal injury lawyers at (817) 476-1797.
How Can You Use Security Video in an Injury Case in Texas?
Security or surveillance video can be used in all sorts of situations, but it needs to be properly collected and introduced.
Uses
Security video can be used for many purposes, but these are some of the most important:
- Showing what happened when there were no outside witnesses
- Backing up your story about what happened
- Challenging the defendant’s story about what happened
- Allowing the jury a neutral vantage point to witness the events for themselves
- Showing the acts in motion, which often has a different impact than a description or a still image
- Catching evidence that might not have been visible to you (e.g., showing a spill sitting in a store for 20-30 minutes before the accident, with no action to clean it up).
Collecting Video
It doesn’t matter who took the video or what store/business/home it came from. It can come from either party to the case, or from a neutral third party unrelated to the case. It is usually best if it is the defendant’s own video or if it is from someone unrelated to the case.
When our Austin, TX personal injury lawyers get the video, we need to make sure it is in a proper file type that we can receive and verify. We also need to make sure we collect it from the source, that we have evidence of the chain of custody, and that it was not doctored in the meantime.
Presenting Video in Court
Most courtrooms are set up to show video and images to the court from a computer. This allows us to easily hook up and project the video in most cases.
When we do so, we may be able to slow the video, zoom, and show still images, as long as it all accurately reflects what happened. This often requires the video’s owner to come in and verify that the video is fair and accurate.
We may also be able to edit it for length to cut out unrelated information and perhaps to add arrows or circles to highlight things, as long as it is still fair and accurate.
How Surveillance Video Can Make Your Case
Surveillance video can often be the key piece of evidence that causes you to win your case or accelerates the case into a quick settlement:
Insurance Companies Might Not Challenge Good Video Evidence in Court
If you have surveillance video showing the accident, and it makes it clear the defendant was at fault, then their insurance company might be quicker to settle. Strong video evidence is hard to beat unless they can somehow keep it out of court.
When insurance companies know they cannot, they will not bother taking the case to court and may settle sooner.
Your Word Versus Theirs
When the only evidence you have of an accident and how it happened is the plaintiff’s story and the defendant’s story, then it comes down to the jury to pick apart the details and decide which side they believe has the better story. This kind of 50/50 situation can be hard to overcome, but security video often does the trick.
Even when both sides have a pretty similar story about what happened, with some minor details altered, the security video can set the story straight. Security video is often the last piece that sets the balance of the scales of justice in your favor.
Unconscious Victim
In some accidents, the victim gets knocked out and has no idea what happened. It can be hard to go to court and just say, “Then ‘WHAM!’ and I was injured!” It doesn’t give the jury much to go on.
However, if there was security video, it can tell the story for you. If you don’t know how you were injured or what happened, outside witness testimony and surveillance video may be the only way to present your case.
How Surveillance Video Can Hurt Your Case
On the other hand, having video of the time before, during, and after the accident might hurt your case, too:
Video Tells a Different Story
You might have seen certain things from your perspective, but the different angle of the security video might change the story about what happened. Even if, from your perspective, you are telling the truth, it might not be the whole story.
In these cases, video might cause the jury to doubt your story and doubt you overall.
Circumstances Before or After the Accident Make You Look Bad
We usually focus on what surveillance video shows during the accident, but information before and after can be important, too.
For example, if you were hurt in a store, the video might show that. But it might also show you distracted because you were arguing with the clerk or sneaking into a back room before the slip and fall. Similarly, video could show you reacting badly to the accident and acting outrageously.
In some situations, this might not be admissible because it is not relevant to the case – and it might not play into whether you were telling the truth or not. But if it is admissible, and it makes you look bad, it could cause you to lose the jury.
Call Our Texas Personal Injury Lawyers Today
For a free case review, call (817) 476-1797 to speak with the San Antonio, TX personal injury attorneys at The Queenan Law Firm.