Essential to a legal toolkit…Essential to a legal toolkit…
Over the last two decades, animations have begun to pop up in courtrooms more and more often. In fact, video is becoming central to success in everything from accident cases to anti-trust lawsuits. The best animations for court illustrate the full scope of an expert’s testimony, allowing jurors or judges to visualize exactly what happened. Evidentiary videos may be entirely animated, or they may switch between animations and existing footage from dashcams, security tapes, or drones.
Case Study
Animation Helps Secure Multi-Million Dollar Settlement
A car driver was traveling eastbound with a passenger at midnight towards a fully controlled intersection on a green light.
A commercial ambulance was traveling northbound towards the same intersection without a patient and not responding to an emergency call. Nonetheless, the ambulance driver decided to activate their Code 3 lights to travel through the red light.
The car collided with the left side of the ambulance and its driver suffered a traumatic brain injury. The car driver sued for damages. The driver alleged that the ambulance driver caused the accident. The defense argued that the car driver had more than enough time to avoid the collision and did not suffer a brain injury.
The plaintiff’s legal team reached out to me to create a visualization of the collision. Using the police report, expert testimony, and depositions from both sides, I created several animations that represented all of the available facts from different viewing angles. During a pre-trial meeting, a clip from one of these animations was played for the defense.
In the coming days the defense settled the case for several million dollars.