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Video tape surveillance during your maritime Jones Act case? You can count on it.

All right now the fourth thing I want to talk to you about is videotape. Everybody's heard about it, people in the industry talk about it, they're going to videotape me, did you get caught on video, is it true that they really hire video investigators? Yes. If you have a claim against a maritime company most likely they're going to go out and try to get videotape surveillance on you.

I want to make an important point about videotape surveillance though. It's usually not a person out there doing heavy, heavy manual labor that gets caught on videotape and that ruins their case. Usually video becomes real important because what you see on video is not necessarily what doctors are being told or what you're telling the company. Let me explain what I mean by that.

Video is most damaging when you're seen on video without a cane that the doctor may have just given you and the doctor tells you always walk with this case. Video is most damaging when you say that you always walk with a limp but they see you on videotape walking normal without a limp. My point is it's not always you out there doing very heavy manual labor that's going to get caught on video that's going to ruin your case. Video becomes important if there's anything on that video that's contrary to what you're telling anybody else.

One final point about videotape surveillance, a lot of times people get videotaped when they're doing small, minimum wage, light duty type jobs. As an example we have a client who is working in a carwash while he's injured. Well unfortunately he didn't fully disclose that he was making some small money working in a carwash. All of a sudden we're in court arguing about whether he's being honest or not when the fact that he's working in a carwash doing light duty work is meaningless to his case we end up having to argue about whether he's an honest person or not because they have that one little bit of video footage of him. So if you're going to go out and work you need to make sure that the company knows that. You certainly don't want to be denying that because they're probably going to get you on video doing that type of work, making a little bit of money just to make ends meet while your claim's going on.

Louisiana Jones Act attorneys dedicated to helping people seek justice and fair compensation. The Young Firm has over 50 years of experience representing maritime workers and injured seamen. With more than 50 years experience, our Louisiana Maritime attorneys have been focusing on the practice of admiralty and maritime law.