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Case Highlights
$13M Carbon Monoxide Brain Injury
Brain Injury Legal Animation Case – using an accident reconstruction animation crafted by our team of professionals.
3 YEAR LITIGATION
SETTLED IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS
“Cody and his team at Fox Animation did a great job for our trial team and clients. We gave them a very short deadline and they produced high-quality animation, specifically tailored to our complex case. We represented six plaintiffs who suffered brain injuries from exposure to carbon monoxide in a commercial office building. The case was heavily litigated for 3 years and the cause and origin of the carbon monoxide were in dispute.
Cody was able to work tirelessly with our team and our expert to bring our expert’s cause and origin opinions to life in vivid and persuasive detail. I produced the animation to the other side on the Thursday before we started a month-long trial. The case settled within 24 hours for a total recovery of $13,000,000.00.”
Griffith J. Winthrop, III – Attorney at Law
Carbon monoxide is created when there is a lack of oxygen coming into the furnace room. When a screen is not maintained, there is no free-flowing oxygen going into the furnace room, resulting in improper combustion. Did the maintenance company act in a responsible manner, keeping the screen maintained and clean?
When all the heaters were turned on, they distributed poisonous air to the second floor of the bank, causing brain damage to multiple individuals.
When there is no air inflow, there is no exhaust outflow. Harmful carbon monoxide was designed to exit through the exhaust pipes, but couldn’t because proper inflow did not occur due to dirty screen blockage.
Product Liability
Whether it’s a design flaw or user error, in a product liability case, there will be complications. Maybe the bearings on a machine weren’t lubricated properly, but the manufacturer also produced below standard bearings. In any case, an animation can provide clarity where there was confusion. In modern society, people gain most of their information via a digital medium, and pictures have become more crucial to our information processing than ever.
How many times have you heard somebody say “I’m a visual learner, I need to be able to see it to understand it”? Humans are growing increasingly dependent on visual media for their information, and from an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. People are able to process information faster when it’s presented visually.
Simon Thorpe says in his abstract for an article for Nature: “How long does it take for the human visual system to process a complex natural image? Subjectively, recognition of familiar objects and scenes appears to be virtually instantaneous, but measuring this processing time experimentally has proved difficult. Behavioural measures such as reaction times can be used1, but these include not only visual processing but also the time required for response execution. However, event-related potentials (ERPs) can sometimes reveal signs of neural processing well before the motor output2. Here we use a go/no-go categorization task in which subjects have to decide whether a previously unseen photograph, flashed on for just 20 ms, contains an animal. ERP analysis revealed a frontal negativity specific to no-go trials that develops roughly 150 ms after stimulus onset. We conclude that the visual processing needed to perform this highly demanding task can be achieved in under 150 ms.”
Thorpe, S., Fize, D. & Marlot, C. (1996). Speed of processing in the human visual system, Nature, Vol 381.
Legal Animation for Product Liability by Fox AE
When attempting to understand the ins and outs of a product liability case, people should be given every advantage to succeed, and that is possible with an animation. At Fox-AE, we understand the importance of timing in a visual, and we intentionally pause our animations at key moments so that the viewer can soak in the information that’s being provided.
Jordan Peterson said in an interview “Human beings are visual animals. Half of our brain is taken up by visual processes, and we’re much more visual than virtually any other animal.” What this entails is that people need to be able to see something to fully comprehend it. Peterson, Jordan (Host) 08/01/2022 “Beyond Order: Rule 3 – Do Not Hide Unwanted Things in the Fog” Ep. 275 [Audio Podcast Episode] The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast
To summarize, humans can see things for even a very short period of time, and gather a relatively large amount of information from that quick visual. If 20 thousandths of a second is enough time to distinguish whether or not an animal is present in a picture, imagine what humans could do with a comfortable amount of time watching a video. Product liability cases have historically been very challenging to describe to a jury, but animations can drastically simplify the process.
Fox Animation Engineering - Industry Leader for Legal Graphics
Ultimately, Fox-AE is able to provide illustrations for all kinds of cases. Whether it’s product liability or accident reconstruction, we’re able to gather an enormous amount of complex information, and condense it into a relatively short video that anybody could understand.
