Last week, before the Atlanta snowstorms so rudely interrupted my work week, I posted an article written by Ed Josiah from Nautilus Consulting regarding whether and how a construction lawyer can get what otherwise might appear to be a demonstrative exhibit admitted successfully into evidence.
Today, thanks to Paul McCullough at S-E-A -- another Forum sponsor -- we will walk through the issues that Mr. Josiah raised using S-E-A's capabilities shown in the video above as our example. I would like to thank Paul for giving Division 1 the right to use this video as a practical example to make the abstract more concrete.
S-E-A created this video from a point cloud. Wikipedia defines a point cloud simply as "a set of data points in some coordinate system." S-E-A uses a 3D scanner to create the point cloud you see in the video. In essence and as Paul McCullough stated to me in an e-mail, "What you are looking at is not a 3D 'model' and it is not an animation. [Instead] it is millions and millions of data points all with a relative x, y, and z location and a color. The sum total of these millions of data points [is] the point cloud." In other words, we have a three-dimensional survey of actual conditions at the project site -- not a modeled hypothesis of what someone believes exists at the project.
In identifying how to admit this point cloud into evidence and as Mr. Josiah's article stated, there are four factors to address to get this video admitted into evidence as an exhibit. These factors are:
- Witness Competence to testify about the exhibit
- Relevance of the exhibit to an issue or issues in the case
- Proper Identification of the exhibit
- Trustworthiness/Authentication of the exhibit
Let's discuss each briefly after the jump. For our discussions, we will assume that we have allegations of excessive slab deflection for a poured-in-place concrete floor.
