How does a metal plate intended to bridge the gap between a truck and the loading dock become a safety hazard? In this case, a dock plate provided at a Portland area building was too small to work with some delivery trucks, but no guidance was provided for proper use. The end result was an unexpected fall and severe knee injury.

Heiling Dwyer Attorneys asked for a 3d model to visualize the scene and test how the dock plate worked with different truck positions. This particular plate was designed with a service height range of 3 inches difference between the truck bed and loading dock. Anything more and a gap occurs under the leading edge of the dock plate. This is a tripping hazard and reduces surface contact which can lead to unintended dock plate movement.

In this case, workers were unloading a truck that was more than three inches above the loading dock. They tried moving the truck farther away from the dock which reduced, but did not completely eliminate the gap under the leading edge of the dock plate. Having the truck farther away also meant the angle flanges bolted to the bottom of plate were not in the proper position to resist lateral movement. Ultimately, the dock plate shifted during use, enough to cause a fall when the plaintiff stepped on it. A more robust dock leveling device would have prevented this injury.

During our first review meeting, it quickly became apparent that the 3d model was a valuable tool for facilitating conversations and getting immediate answers to questions such as, “what if they had installed the dock plate backwards,” or “what if they had used a larger dock plate?” When it became necessary to add another expert to the team a few weeks before trial, a screen-share meeting with real-time 3d modeling ensured good communication.

This work gave the attorneys confidence that their story would be well understood by a jury, and put them in a strong negotiating position. A confidential settlement was reached shortly before trial.

“We had a good case, but Fat Pencil made it a powerful case. Their images conveyed far more than all our words could express.” Dean Heiling, Heiling Dwyer Attorneys

Earlier this summer, our studio got a real treat. A client came to us with a personal project – a genealogy data visualization. They and 70+ members of their immediate and (very) extended family were gathering in early July, and wanted to have t-shirts for everyone.

Our client found a radial genogram online and suggested it as a model for the t-shirt design. A handful of hours spent futzing around in Adobe Illustrator later, and we had the above genogram. The entire process made me giddy; there is little I love as much as taking a unique data set and turning it into something beautiful.

Family trees and other representations of genealogy come with their own bucket of interesting design challenges. They can tell you all you need to know about a family and also nothing at all about the individuals’ lives. Devoid of geographic, cultural, or chronological context, family trees can rapidly become art projects. The resulting graphics are rarely clean, harmonious, or without flaws or bias. I’ve given up on many family tree projects over the years for this reason*; in a poetic fashion, this makes them an apt visualization of the messiness of human relationships.

Our particular genogram was going to show five generations and over 120 people. To keep things simpler, we opted not to include past or present spouses, just the direct family lines. After examining some of our spatial options, we chose to make each generation a complete ring and thus the genogram a cohesive circle. The different branches of the family may live states apart, but on the t-shirts, they are neighbors.

Throughout the project, I accumulated a mental database of genealogy visualization touch stones. My favorite is without a doubt artist Maissa Toulet’s retro-sassy family trees:

I also recommend:

• A family travel map from Jamie Wong
• Simply Google image searching “genealogy data viz”. It’ll give you a lot of fun non-human stories
• Citeology
• Checking out Fat Pencil’s past data viz projects

* In middle school, I tried very hard to make a comprehensive family tree of European royal families. When Wikipedia explained to me just how inter-related they all were, especially in earlier centuries, I realized that the tree would have to be 3D. I gave up at that point. Years later, I learned that someone else had a similar idea and has executed it beautifully.

One of my New Years resolutions for 2018 was to finish a project I started two years ago. In the spring of 2016, I was a soon-to-be architecture school graduate minoring in historic preservation. I was working on a course project, the documentation of a university building to the standards of the Historic American Building Survey (HABS). At the urging of my professor, I planned to submit my drawings of the building, Deady Hall, to the Leicester B. Holland Prize, an annual drafting competition run by the National Park Service. This idea, however, would soon be steamrolled by the machine that is College Graduation.

I left college, but Deady stuck with me. You could say I was haunted by the job left unfinished. So, in late winter of this year, with most of 2018 still in front of me and looking for a meaty project, I decided I wanted to pick up where I left off with Deady.

The HABS program was established in 1933 as a make-work program, part of the New Deal. Architects, draftsmen, and photographers, unemployed during the Depression, were tasked with measuring and documenting a representative cross-section of American architectural heritage. The program is credited with providing the imagery that would inspire movement toward architectural preservation across America. HABS is often listed alongside its sister Heritage Documentation Programs: the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and the Historic American Landscape Survey (HALS). All three are operated by the Department of the Interior through the NPS. The Holland Prize, first awarded in 2011, is a recognition of excellence in a single-sheet measured drawing of a historic building, site, or structure.

The Holland Prize and HABS are premised on the accuracy of the drawings. The criteria for both the prize and HABS are specific and highly detailed. The NPS guidelines dictate preferred measuring methods, field note organization, CAD formatting, drawing scales and formats, line thicknesses, the use of hatching, the application of text, and SO much more.

I was acquainted with HABS documentation standards after my first attempt in 2016. As a one-woman operation, I knew I wouldn’t be able to measure the whole building, inside and out, on my own. I did have the tools, however, to take the 2D work of others, double-check their dimensions, combine the information, and construct a detailed 3D digital model. My drawings would have to rely on previous surveys of Deady, campus facilities records, and what strategic measurements I could take. I knew this process would to be unorthodox for HABS, but my year with Fat Pencil gave me confidence in the veracity of the final product.

I knew from the outset of the project that I wanted to push the boundaries of the Holland Prize in two specific ways. First, I believed Deady was most beautiful and impressive when viewed at one of its corners; I elected to make an isometric view of the building the centerpiece of my layout. Such drawings are used sparingly and more often used for HAER structural diagrams. Second, a standard HABS single-sheet includes a written description of the building, its history, and significance. Instead – in Fat Pencil fashion – I anchored my sheet with a timeline of Deady, moments in its history set against a graph of student enrollment over time.

The Holland Prize was established with nostalgic sentiment for the waning art of architectural delineation, which originated from the Ecole des Beaux Arts. Prize competitors are encouraged to consider drafting by hand, but this route is taken only rarely. The vast majority of participants (and architectural practitioners, generally) rely on CAD and BIM softwares.

The measurement and survey process, too, is increasingly becoming digitized. HABS and the Holland Prize now ask that digital survey data be included in submission packets, such as that produced by Total Station and FARO laser scanners. Fat Pencil works with this kind of 3D data often, and I briefly considered using similar tech for Deady. Doing so would have been too-much-too-quickly for the scale of my operation, but access to tech and software like laser scanners and drones is increasing exponentially the rate at which all sizes of notable and historic sites and structures can be respectfully surveyed.

We get asked this question a lot: how accurate is that model?

The short answer is: as accurate as it needs to be. Whenever we have measurements and/or dimensions available, our model reproduces them to the same degree of precision as the measurement came to us. Often, however, our models are based on a range of source info, including photographs, satellite imagery and police diagrams. We use a combination of visual judgement, knowledge of standard measurements, and, when the task demands it, a scientific process called photogrammetry to position objects in the model. Depending on the source material, that usually puts our level of accuracy somewhere between millimeters and a few meters.

So does that mean our models are wrong? Yes and no. Yes, because as British statistician George Box quipped, “All models are wrong but some are useful.” No, because the flip side of that statement is that a model must be “wrong” in order to be useful.

For instance, a map is a two-dimensional scale model of a place. Its usefulness can be characterized by all the information it leaves out, all the ways that it is inaccurate and “wrong.” What gets included in a map are only the things the mapmaker thinks we need to know, the answers to the questions the mapmaker is trying to answer (What is the shape of the world? How do places relate to each other? How does one get from point A to point B?). A map is necessarily a reduction of reality.

Which leads us to another wonderful quote (credited to scholar Alfred Korzybski): “the map is not the territory.” (If you’re enjoying these quotes, read more here.) Well, obviously, you might say. But it’s an important precept to keep in mind, because it’s a distinction that easy to lose track of. That’s why our first task in any project is to clearly identify the objective(s) for any maps (or models) that we are being asked to create. A map (or model) is only as good as the clarity of its intention.

So back to the original question: how accurate is that model?

If the purpose of the model is to establish the path of a bus based on a photogrammetric process involving video footage and a survey of the scene, the model is very accurate (within a few centimeters across the area of an urban intersection).

If the purpose of the model is to show how an injury on a balcony occurred, the model might be very precise in some places (the railing that failed, which led to the injury), and approximate in others (the precise size and placement of windows, for example).

If the purpose of the model is to determine if muzzle flashes seen from a helicopter could have come from a homeowner’s porch, the camera position may be unknown (due to a lack of available information), but its line of sight can be found with a level of accuracy sufficient to definitively answer the question.

As Dr. Box says, “all models are wrong.” The useful ones are only as “right” as their objectives need them to be.

When I saw the headline in Monday’s Oregonian, “Judge throws out 3d model,” I was nervous.

The case in question, USA vs Joseph Astarita, has generated tremendous media interest because it is related to the shooting death of Robert “LeVoy” Finicum, a spokesman for the group of armed protestors that took over Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016. Astarita is not charged with firing the shots that killed Finicum, but with lying to investigators about discharging his weapon. This week’s news is not even about the actual trial, but rather a pre-trial hearing to determine whether certain expert testimony can be shown to a jury.

And yet, I’ve been following the case carefully because the methods used by Toby Terpstra (the government’s 3d animation and reconstruction expert) are very similar to those we use at Fat Pencil Studio. Will US District Judge Robert Jones’ ruling in such a high profile case make it difficult to have 3d models admitted in future trials? Let’s just say I was one of the first people to download and read the full details.

Like Terpstra, I’ve been in the hot seat to explain the basis and methods for creating 3d visualizations of crime and accident scenes. Earlier this year, I used a 3d model while testifying in a Portland police shooting case. The evidence included an aerial surveillance video that showed the location of officers, and brief flashes of light presumed to be muzzle flashes associated with gunfire. I encountered the same issues as Terpstra regarding an unknown focal length of the surveillance camera, which allows us to find line-of-sight, but not an exact location of the airplane camera. However, in this case, I only needed to explain that the flashes could not possibly have come from the plaintiff’s gun. Photogrammetry and 3d visualization techniques helped me explain to the jury why this was true. At the time shots were fired, the plaintiff was not visible to the aerial camera– it wasn’t even close. Any uncertainty around the precise location of the muzzle flashes was far outweighed by the long distance to plaintiff’s location. In other words, accuracy is relative. Getting an exact answer is less important than whether the accuracy is sufficient to answer the question posed.

still frame of a Portland Police aerial surveillance video.

In a Las Vegas wrongful death lawsuit involving a bus and a bicycle, we used security camera footage to help pinpoint the location where the collision occurred. As in the Astarita case, the item of interest (in this case a bicycle) appeared only as a “fuzzy smudge” in the video stills. However, we were aided by an additional bit of physical evidence—a black streak on the side of the bus that all sides agreed was caused by impact with the bike handlebars. I used a 3d model in court to show how knowledge of the bus path (which was accurately reconstructed using photogrammetry) could be combined with physical evidence to infer the location of the collision. I also used the model to show jurors possible locations of the bicycle a few seconds before the crash, and how this would look from witness perspectives. However, I made it clear at the outset, when describing 3d visualization methods, that considering the foundation of what you see on screen is of critical importance. Some elements, such as the roadway and bus path are based on scientific methods such as 3d scanning and photogrammetry. Other elements such as the position of the bicycle prior to the crash may be based on eyewitness testimony or a hypothetical scenario offered by an attorney. All of this can be helpful in understanding what happened, but careful thought must be given to the weight of the evidence. Jurors are smart enough to make this evaluation for a 3d model, they just need an honest introduction to what they are seeing.

yellow circle highlights dark profile of bicycle rider just prior to collision with side of bus.

In the Astarita case, Judge Jones heard many hours of argument regarding photogrammetry (or “camera matching”) methods and errors that may have affected the accuracy of the reconstruction. In Monday’s ruling, he largely sidestepped the issue of whether Terpstra’s methods were reliable, and instead focused on the human figures shown in the model, finding that the location and body position could not be reasonably inferred from the fuzzy smudges in video evidence: “To present it to a jury would suggest a degree of certainty that cannot be justified and would be unduly prejudicial under [Federal Evidence] Rule 403.”

Judge Jones did leave the door open for the government to use a 3d model of the scene and vehicles as context for eyewitnesses to describe the position of human figures. How will the government adjust their strategy going forward? How will others choose to interpret Judge Jones’ ruling in future cases? I’m not good at predicting the future, but I will suggest (to any attorney that will listen) that it’s very important to consider whether an expert’s method of inquiry has sufficient accuracy to provide a definitive answer to the question being considered. This issue could benefit from another article, but for now I’ll conclude by suggesting that if the answer is not crystal clear, it’s in your best interest to refine the question or adjust the presentation strategy.

When a person dies in a motor vehicle collision, it can be a challenge to figure out who was at fault. One of the key witnesses (the victim) is dead, and those that remain at the scene can be traumatized or biased. In an ideal world, investigators would have the time and resources to identify all possible witnesses, as well as consider the role of street and vehicle design for every crash. Unfortunately, it’s very common for these investigations to reach conclusions based only on physical evidence left at the scene and limited witness interviews. This leaves the families of crash victims with a difficult choice: accept the (often flawed) conclusions of a police investigation, or file a lawsuit.

On the morning of April 17, 2017, Dr. Kayvan Khiabani, a prominent expert in reconstructive hand surgery, was riding his bicycle southbound on Pavilion Center Drive near the Red Rock Casino Resort. A Motor Coach industries (MCI) tour bus, also traveling southbound, passed him near the intersection with Griffith Peak Drive. For reasons unknown, Dr. Khiabani hit the side of the bus, fell to the ground and impacted the rear tire. He was transported to the hospital but did not survive his injuries— blunt force trauma to the head and chest. A nearby security camera captured the bus traveling though the intersection, but the position of the bicyclist is obscured by trees in the foreground.

Las Vegas Police interviewed the bus driver and two passengers who claimed that the bicycle swerved into the bus. The death was ruled ‘accidental’ and police found Dr. Khiabani at fault for failing to stay in the bike lane. Defense attorneys for MCI adopted this view, and argued that the bus met all federal safety standards.

Plaintiff’s attorneys pointed out that the bus driver did not make way for the bicycle. That is, the bus did not move to an available adjacent lane or otherwise provide three feet of passing clearance as required by Nevada law. They also argued that the bus design and lack of safety features should share the blame. Specifically they alleged:

• Poor aerodynamic design causes an air blast and suction effect near the front tire of the bus.
• The driver’s view of the right side is obscured by a high dashboard and opaque door panes.
• Proximity sensors (if installed) could have warned the driver of nearby hazards.
• A rear tire guard (if installed) could have pushed Dr. Khiabani out of the way prior to impact.

Fat Pencil Studio was hired by Plaintiff’s attorney Kemp Jones & Coulthard to create an accurate digital 3d model of the scene, use photogrammetry to trace the path of the bus through the intersection, and visualize possible collision scenarios. Additionally, we were asked to create aerial photo maps for use in deposition and analyze video footage of the crash aftermath.

Fat Pencil started work early, before any depositions had been taken. Our first success was using video from different sources (cell phone and security camera footage), synchronized with audio from a 911 call, to identify additional witnesses that were not interviewed by police. We also used an early version of the 3d model to visualize possible collision scenarios with attorneys as they were selecting key issues to frame their case.

One mystery was the fact that no collision was apparently visible in the security camera footage. Dr. Khiabani only shows up on the ground after the bus is well past him, and it is unclear where exactly he was when the collision occurred. However, the bus inspection provided a clue: a large scuff mark near the front wheel well that suggested contact with the rubber housing of the bicycle brake handles.

This prompted us to look more carefully at this area of the bus while moving frame by frame through the video footage, and that’s when we noticed a dark blurry shape moving between frames, not consistent with any other objects in view. The only possible explanation was that we were seeing Dr. Khiabani just prior to falling from his bicycle.

This information helped other experts in the case (accident reconstructionist / biomechanical engineer) be more precise in their findings. We used visual facilitation (online meeting with real time 3d modeling) to help the experts visualize and share opinions, which proved to be a crucial time saver in this fast-paced investigation.

When it came time for trial, we were able to quickly create new exhibits to simulate the views of multiple witnesses based on their testimony. The judge allowed full use of our SketchUp model in court, which set the scene for an interesting session of real time 3d visualization in front of a jury. After the usual qualifying questions, I spent a couple of hours moving the bus and bicycle around as requested by opposing attorneys to explore hypothetical explanations for why the collision occurred, and how these explanations compared with physical evidence and witness testimony.

The trial lasted a month, but the jury needed only a few hours to find in favor of the plaintiff, awarding a total of $18.7 million in damages to Dr. Khiabani’s family. MCI is expected to appeal the ruling.

“Fat Pencil’s expertise was valuable from the beginning of the case. They saw details that others missed, helped our experts collaborate effectively, and delivered a compelling visual story at trial.”
– Will Kemp, Partner, Kemp Jones & Coulthard

• Las Vegas Review-Journal
• Courtroom View Network (CVN)
• Bus & Motorcoach News

Last month we co-hosted a Design Week open house with our office mates, Manifesto, and it was a hit! Right off the bat we had a huge group of high schoolers from an entrepreneur club come to see the space and discuss careers in design, which set the mood for the evening: busy.

The loose theme of the event was analog media. We had typewriters, Post-It-based data visualizations, postcard writing stations, and a record player banging out some tunes. Our signature cocktail was El Lápiz Gordo (The Fat Pencil) and throughout the event I took Polaroid pictures of people to take home as souvenirs, and got their permission to share them.

Thanks to our shared office situation we got to see a fun cross-section of people at the open house. We found ourselves really enjoying talking to the mixed crowd of designers, entrepreneurs, marketers, videographers, design enthusiasts, and more. We even had some visitors in costume, pre-gaming for another event.

Since we’re visual people let’s cut to the chase and look at some pictures!

From the stairs

Full house

Such frustration

Full house 2

for the record…

Typewriters

wall of words

type

Typewriters at work

Write yourself a letter

write a manifesto

write a haiku

neverending story

Photos of photos!

Our signature cocktail, El Lapiz Gordo

Our lovely bartender Michelle

Not all heroes wear capes

Always on time

All smiles

Ady & Quinn

Scott of Manifesto Fame

Just moved to Portland

Great Conversationalist

My favorite part was seeing folks interact with the live data visualizations we had set up. It was great to see so many people participating and bonding with each other over their answers. What would your answers have been?

Face Book Use by Age

Contact with Parents by Gender

Not all heroes wear capes

Facebook What?

Dat visualization!

Setting up

We recently had the opportunity to work with criminal defense counsel on a case with an interesting set of facts. It was known that three people traveled across state lines, and that illegal activities ensued. The precise nature of these activities, and the motivations of the people involved, however, were hotly disputed. The legal team had access to cellular tower location call records of the parties involved, and had a hunch that much could be learned from studying this data. But there were literally thousands of calls, and the phone companies provided records in a format that wasn’t exactly easy to work with (understatement alert). Our job was to create a way to visualize and interrogate this data so the attorneys could develop the story of their case.

Here’s a sample of what the raw data looked like:

We’ve worked with some gnarly data sets in the past, but this particular challenge called for something a little outside of our usual bag of tricks. So we teamed up with ace developer Paul Souders of Scrubjay to design and produce a custom data interface that allowed the legal team to track the activities of the three people involved in time, geographic space, and in relation to each other. Paul did an amazing job of taming the raw data and coming up with effective solutions to achieve the functionality we were after.

To protect the identities of the people involved, we’ve created a demo version of the interface using just a few days of hypothetical data. Click on the image below to check it out (works best in Chrome).

Each call is listed in a table on the left showing the date, time and duration of the call along with the identity of the caller and recipient. You can check/un-check calls to show or hide them as desired. You can also limit the data set by selecting a time range in the timeline at the bottom. The locations of the pinged cell towers are plotted on the map at the right. The calls are color coded by who made them. Check boxes on the right allow you to filter the data by caller as well.

The interface proved highly useful in reconstructing events on key dates, and rebutting the prosecution’s characterizations of what happened. It was an excellent investigative tool for the legal team, but further work was needed to distill what they had learned into a coherent story for the jury. (Different audiences! Different graphic approaches! See: Many Audiences.)

So we used the interface as a basis for annotated graphics that turned the data into an understandable sequence of events.

All in all, it was one of the most ambitious projects we’ve ever worked on. We were lucky to work with a legal team who had the vision and tenacity to pursue the story hidden within the data.

“I just want to thank you again for the excellent service and results from your team in this case. It has, again, been very fulfilling to work with a group of highly responsive and creative professionals. We look forward to the next engagement.” —Defense Investigator

I came across an excellent talk that Jonathan Corum, science graphics editor for the New York Times, recently gave in Copenhagen called “Design for an Audience.” The whole presentation is so thrillingly good from start to finish that I hate to quibble even a little, but “an” audience isn’t quite right. Because the talk is really about how there are multiple audiences that one has to consider during a design process.

For Corum, his ultimate audience is the readers of the New York Times. But before his visual stories hit the streets, the information contained in them has to be presented to several different groups. First, the scientists whose research forms the basis for the story have to address members of their own fields in scientific journals. Then Corum, who isn’t a trained scientist, takes on the task of understanding the findings in layman’s terms. At this point, he is trying to explain the research to himself: he is his own audience. Next he takes that understanding and some rough visual ideas to a different audience: his team, a group of people who come from different academic backgrounds. Finally the team works together to produce graphics that tell a story that a reader can understand and appreciate in a few minutes. All of these audiences have benefited from having their unique need to understand addressed by design.

Here is an example of what he’s talking about. This is a diagram of an emerging language. Audience = linguists. This is enough for a linguist to understand.

Here is another diagram of an emerging language. Audience = NYT readers. Both diagrams contain the same information, but the second clarifies the graphic elements, shows hierarchy, and provides context for a lay audience. It tells a story in a way that the first one does not.

This idea of “many audiences” is important to the work we do at Fat Pencil Studio as well. Often when a lawyer first considers working with us, she is thinking of her ultimate audience: the judge and/or jury. Certainly compelling visual stories are a great way to communicate to that audience. But here’s the thing: as Corum shows us, visual stories are a great way to communicate to any audience, including the audience of the lawyer herself, the audience of her client, the audience of her legal team (including experts), and the audience of her opposing counsel.

Why are visual stories such an effective means of communicating ideas and information? Because the process of creating the visual stories—commonly known as “design”—is the process of making thought visible. When thoughts are made visible they become clear, accessible, and invite engagement in a way that writing and talking might not.

Over the course of a case, a lawyer might end up telling the story of her case hundreds of times. If the repeated telling of that story doesn’t advance understanding, then that’s simply time wasted. But if the thinking behind that story can be made visible, then understanding increases both for the storyteller and her many audiences.

SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Most urban police departments have a team trained in the use of military tactics and equipment including assault rifles, armored vehicles, and night vision cameras. These have become important tools in responding to crisis such as terrorist attacks. But bringing all that firepower into dense urban neighborhoods carries a significant risk of unintended consequences if things don’t go as planned.

CASE FACTS

A local police tactical unit was conducting an operation to serve an arrest warrant on an individual residing in a North Portland townhouse apartment. The plaintiff resides in a separate building immediately to the east of the target of this operation. At around 9:45pm, the plaintiff stepped onto his front porch to confront a person or persons he believed to have been prowling in his back yard. Shortly afterwards, three officers were involved in shooting him.

COMPETING NARRATIVES

No advance warning was given to neighborhood residents for this military-style raid involving 20+ officers, three armored vehicles, and an aerial surveillance unit equipped with an infrared “night vision” camera system. After confronting the strangers that walked through his yard, plaintiff claims that (1) he was ordered to “get back in the house,” (2) officers never identified themselves or their purpose, and (3) after retrieving a handgun in the hopes of scaring them off, he was shot almost immediately, having never raised his arm or fired his weapon.

Defense witnesses claimed they did identify themselves as police officers, and only fired after seeing the plaintiff square up and point the gun directly at them. They also explained their decision not to notify neighbors in advance by saying secrecy was required for a successful operation.

OBJECTIVES

Fat Pencil was hired by plaintiff’s counsel to help visualize the scene and also rebut a defense theory that muzzle flashes visible in surveillance camera footage were evidence of plaintiff firing his weapon.

THE VISUAL STORY

We created a digital 3d model of the scene based on hand measurements and photographs, then added human figures and weapons in positions suggested by deposition testimony. We also added the bullet strike locations on the house, as surveyed by police investigators, and checked to see if the lines connecting bullet strikes to officer positions were feasible.

From the surveillance video, we captured frames that included muzzle flashes and overlaid them with the 3d model in order to match the perspective. This allowed us to infer a camera position and draw a “shadow plane” connecting the camera with the roof overhang that occluded a view of the plaintiff. The shadow plane moves as the camera changes position, but our analysis made it clear that flashes visible on the video footage were all connected with guns fired from the officer’s position, and not by the plaintiff.

OUTCOME

A federal jury awarded $7 million in damages to plaintiff, finding tactical officers liable for battery and negligence.

“The aerial view of the scene proved useful in court when for asking officers to confirm their position,” said plaintiff’s attorney Michael Rose of Creighton & Rose, PC. “We had already used the 3d model to piece together where they had to be based on their statements and evidence collected at the scene, so we were confident in letting them provide this testimony.”

Plaintiff’s attorney David Park added, “The ability to fade between the infrared camera surveillance video and a matched view in the 3d model made the scientific process much easier to understand. The jury saw that our client’s position was not visible to the surveillance camera at the time of the shooting… not even close. This made us less vulnerable to an attempt by the defense to create a false impression around who fired their weapons.”