Is Legal Video discoverable and useable by opposing parties?

Part 6 of the Day in the Life Video Admissibility Series

Go to the previous post in this series: Legal Video: cumulative testimony?

Plaintiff’s counsel must take note that all of the material videotaped by the legal video production company is discoverable. In the Supreme Court of Illinois Cisarik v Palos Community Hospital (Ill. 1991) 579 N.E.2d 873, the court ordered the plaintiff’s attorney to provide the defendants with a copy of the videotape and all of the raw, unedited footage. Plaintiff’s counsel refused. The court held that such videotapes are not subjected to more stringent discovery guidelines than other types of evidence. The court noted that viewed in its proper light, a day in the life videotape is “merely a form of demonstrative evidence that is comparable to a still photograph, a graph, a chart, a drawing or a model.”

It is extremely advisable that when commissioning a legal video production company for documenting a day in the life video for trial, that counsel complete due diligence to be sure that the production company he or she hires has experience and integrity in documenting these matters. No legal videographer should ever request a plaintiff to exaggerate, repeat, rehearse, act-out or attempt any task that is out of the plaintiff’s ordinary routine. Seeing an injured person walking with a cane and kicking a soccer ball in their backyard is not feasible or ordinary.

An experienced videographer will know not to use certain camera angles, in-lens zooming to accentuate excessive depictions of pain or use questionable methods in editing the continuity of scenes, or overall content. There is little sense investing in a day in the life video to be presented in trial and having it excluded for prejudice or even worse, having the improprieties of the video company be used against your client in trial.

Go to next post in this series: Day in the life legal video – better than words