Authenticating Documents in Personal Injury Cases
Brien Roche
There frequently is a need to authenticate documents. That process is easier now than it was years ago. Virginia Code § 8.01-390.3 allows for authentication by affidavit. Use that Code section to your benefit.
A form that might be used for such authentication of business records per Rule 2:803(6), 2:902(6)and Va Code 8.01-391(D)follows:
Certification Statement
I do hereby certify as follows:
- I am the Custodian of the records identified herein or, in the alternative, I am the person to whom said Custodian reports.
- The records identified immediately below are authenticated as a true copy of the original:
a. Patient name: __________________________________________.
b. Patient date of birth: _____________________________________.
c. Name of Facility: ________________________________________.
d. Quantity of records: ______________________________________.
e. Dates of service: _________________________________________.
- These records:
a. Were made at or near the time of the acts, events by– or from information transmitted by — someone with knowledge.
b. Were made and kept in the course of the regularly-conducted activity of the facility identified herein.
c. Were made and kept as a regular practice of the facility identified herein.
Signature of the person providing this certification:
Date copies were made and the certification signed:
Authenticating Documents Personal Injury-Google Photographs
Google has photographed much of the world. That data can be used to your benefit in premises liability cases. The question is how do you get Google to authenticate it.
The process is cumbersome but there is a process.
Contact the clerk’s office for the Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara. That is where Google is located. What you need is an Application for Discovery Subpoena In An Action Pending Outside of California. You also need a Subpoena for Production of Business Records In An Action Pending Outside of California. Finally, you’re going to need a subpoena from your forum court.
On both your application and also your subpoena you are going to need to identify the entire URL of each picture that you want. The URL may actually reflect not just a single image but may reflect multiple images. Those URLs however need to be provided. The subpoena may be served at Google’s address at: Google, Inc., 1600 Amphitheater Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043 on their records custodian.
Your subpoena should request all data establishing the date of the photographs.
What you’re ultimately going to be requesting from Google is a Certificate of Authenticity as to the specific photograph(s) confirming further what the dates are.
The Certificate of Authenticity should conform with the above-referenced Virginia Code section.
Opposition to Certificate of Authenticity
If your opponent is still going to object to the authenticity of the photographs, then you may have to take the deposition of the Google custodian.
Another alternative is to hire an internet archivist. These are individuals who can search the internet to identify when these photos were available online. Essentially what these archivists do is they can pinpoint when certain things were available online. For instance, let’s say you want to know about flooding in Fairfax County. In particular, you want to know about flooding in Fairfax County before March 19, 2019.
You would use the following search term and search operator:
Fairfax County Flooding BEFORE:2019-03-19
If you want to know about Fairfax County flooding after a certain date, then the search term and operator that you would use are:
Fairfax County Flooding AFTER:2019-03-19
Get an Experienced Personal Injury Lawyer in the DMV on Your Side
Call, or contact us for a free consult. For more info on Google see the Wikipedia pages. Also, for more info on authenticating documents for personal injury see the post on this site dealing with electronic discovery issues.