How to Turn Large & Complex Cases Into Simple Interactive Trial Graphics
Trial Exhibits was recently hired to provide consulting, exhibits and trial presentation support on an extensive project. The case involved an international company which has over 740 physical locations throughout the United States and Canada, that hired a property management company to facilitate a sign rebranding. Each facility received a total of six new signs. Within months of installing the new signs, the vinyl application on the rebranded signs started peeling, cracking and fading.
Example of the interactive exhibit
Two claims were filed:
The first claim revolved around the management companies’ contract and warranty language regarding their responsibilities to oversee and manage the project. The second claim was filed against the vinyl manufacturer.
The case started with a very complex excel spreadsheet that contained analytical data regarding the 4,440 signs installed throughout North America. This information needed to be transformed into a usable and easy to understand courtroom presentation.
This case presented two major issues:
1. Photographing and documenting the damage, on location of the 740 sites throughout the United States and Canada over a seven-week period.
2. Creating and managing a massive custom-built interactive database featuring each location information, documents and thousands of photographs and importing the data into an easy to navigate trial presentation.
The first task: Outline Logistical and efficient transportation routes that maximize the number of sites photographed in one day. Arrange travel to 740 locations in North America to photograph and document each singular defective sign. Each location received six rebranded signs. The entire project needed to be completed in just under two months. A custom interactive online mapping system was created by Trial Exhibits and used by our team of photographers to verify each of the 740 locations. Upon completing the logistics of how to efficiently handle a project of this magnitude, in the limited timeframe, we deployed our team of photographers, who travel coast to coast covering the entire United States, including Alaska, Hawaii and providences in Canada.
The second task: How to manage the voluminous amounts of data and photographs for an organized, fast and concise trial presentation. For this solution, Trial Exhibits designed a custom coded, interactive multimedia demonstrative that included all the analytical data, documents and photographs.
Example search result
Features of the interactive exhibit:
A detailed map of North America was created, which included an icon for each of the 740 physical locations. All sites on the interactive map allowed the user to navigate the map, zoom in and out, and select specific locations on the map view. For easy reference, all sites on the map were created with a unique ID number
- Zoom in and pan on a section of the map to get a closer view of a region or state.
- Each site on the map is interactive to view data and photos for that location.
- Each site has its own page with the location information, an overall photograph of the business and a menu of photographs for each sign.
- Once a photograph is selected, the user can easily zoom in and out to view the claimed damage on any section of the photograph.
- The interactive demonstrative exhibit includes a search feature to quickly access a location by name of business, dealer code
s, phone number, address or state. The results can be filtered by search type, as well. - The user can return to the map view of the exhibit at any time.
The final interactive exhibit contained over 740 locations, 14,000 files and 7,500 folders that were created into an easy to use format for the courtroom.
Trial Exhibits provided multiple litigation support services throughout the trial preparation process, such as assisting the attorneys with data organization, development of trial graphics, interactive multimedia visuals and trial database preparation. For the trial, we provided “hot-seat” operations in the courtroom, trial presentation equipment (HDMI setup with TVs and monitors), video deposition editing, impeaching video clips and preparation of closing argument PowerPoint slides.
Screenshot of the many locations photographed in North America
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