Surveillance video helps in personal injury claim

There are a lot of classic jokes that begin, “So this guy walks into a bar. . . ” But it’s no joke if you are a bar owner and a customer got drunk in your establishment, threatened other patrons, picked a fight with the security guard who had to throw him out, then turns around and sues for his injuries.

This is exactly what happened in a recent case brought to NCAVF.



Clarify action with short clips that keep your jury engaged


Multiple security cameras recorded several hours of video throughout the bar and outside which captured different aspects of the incident, and distilling these into a cohesive and clear story were crucial to presenting this case to the court.

Attorneys for the insurance company representing the bar owner asked the forensic video experts at NCAVF to examine surveillance footage from this incident and enlarge the plaintiff’s image while maintaining clarity. In addition, NCAVF was tasked with creating short clips and organizing them for the attorney’s ease of use in court.

Zooming into the CCTV surveillance video, NCAVF experts were able to show a timeline of the plaintiff not only making threatening gestures to others in the bar, but also slapping his girlfriend and fighting with security guards. This enhanced video evidence clearly proved the plaintiff had been violent and menacing. In this instance, digital analysis and enhancement of the video tape was particularly important because most witnesses (other than the security guards) had left the scene.



Tracking plaintiff across multiple incidents throughout the night supports actions taken by security guards


This case demonstrates the value of having a forensic video expert to clarify and organize multiple cameras of a single event chronologically, allowing the court and your jury to easily follow the action from room to room and to view an incident from multiple angles.

Security footage is automatically erased by your surveillance system

David Notowitz, lead forensic expert at NCAVF, advises attorneys and insurance companies that “after an incident, whether criminal or civil, time is of the essence in retrieving video tape. Surveillance video is often stored only temporarily on a CCTV hard drive, because new surveillance footage records over older files. Critical evidence can disappear quickly. Call the business where surveillance video was taken and ask if you can send someone to retrieve the video evidence ASAP. We perform this service for attorneys and insurance companies and almost always get full cooperation from businesses, even without a subpoena.”

When a case goes to mediation or to court, the ability to present clear video and audio evidence is crucial. Not only must the presentation on the screen be clear and easily understood by the jury, but filtering, enhancing, and synchronizing multiple angles of otherwise unclear images can help judges, mediators, and juries see what really happened in a given situation.

In multiple cases, NCAVF has helped insurance companies defend against millions of dollars in damages.