Civil Law Case Studies

A Witness Located with Social Media

A defendant driver used her grandmother’s address on her vehicle registration and driver’s license, but she did not reside at this address. Process servers tried to serve her several times and the grandmother was uncooperative. Normal “skip tracing” techniques failed to produce a serviceable address.

• We conducted a “social media” investigation and found the defendant’s Facebook® profile, she had abandoned it.
• We next found her Instagram® profile and discovered she was leading a fitness “boot camp” at several parks in a nearby county.
• Our investigator made a pretext call to the fitness program and discovered the defendant was leading a class at a particular park on Monday evenings.

Result: The investigator coordinated with a process server to identify the defendant at the fitness class and had her served that night at the park.

Process servers are great at serving papers. Sometimes, however, you need a skilled investigator who can put “boots on the ground” and devote the time necessary to conduct an in-depth investigation. The cost may be somewhat higher, but how else will you bring the defendant and the insurer to the table to negotiate?

Settlement Reached with Hospital for Client’s Injuries

The attorneys representing a woman injured while being treated at a local hospital wanted to identify former employees with knowledge of the operations of the facility. Using our “Silver Bullet” locator service we:

• Utilized a proprietary search method and accessed multiple databases, state repositories, licensing authorities and social media outlets, our researchers identified over thirty former staff members, including nurses, physicians, radiology techs, maintenance workers, cafeteria workers, and administrative personnel.
• We were also able to determine dates of employment for many of these employees, and developed home addresses, current employment and phone and email information for them.

Result: The attorneys conducted depositions with some of the identified employees and obtained information critical to reaching a settlement with the hospital for the client’s injuries.

Six Figure Settlement Obtained

The attorneys represented a woman who injured herself when she slipped and fell next to the food line at a local buffet. The lawyers wanted to identify and interview former employees about the care and maintenance of the buffet.

• Multiple sources were searched without identifying a single employee.
• An investigator visited the restaurant and noticed that the employees all appeared to be foreign nationals.
• The attorneys authorized surveillance on the restaurant. Investigation confirmed that the employers were using a van to transport a dozen undocumented workers from a single apartment a few miles away.

Result: The attorneys negotiated a large six figure settlement with the defendant’s insurance company, based on the business’s involvement with illegal hiring practices.

The Corporate Veil Was Pierced

The attorney’s client company was being harassed by a “corporation” that claimed European roots and had its “offices” inside the “sovereign nation” of a North American Indian tribal area. The client had examined the domain name and registration information, but the site was hosted by a third party host designed to maintain anonymity. After some frustrating phone calls to the “corporation,” the client contacted us.

• First, we checked the state’s secretary of state Web site and, to no one’s surprise, found no such entity registered with the state.
• Next, we checked the “business address” for the “corporation” listed on their Web site, in a small town owned by the tribal nation. It was a Unites States Post Office; the “suite” was a post office box.
• We contacted a licensed investigator who worked about an hour away from the town. He traveled to the post office and filed a request for box holder information, as the box was being utilized for several businesses that were, in fact, registered with the state. The form was returned with the name of an individual in a large metropolitan area, several hours away from the small town.
• With that vital piece of information, we were able to quickly develop a profile on the shadowy principal, who was the subject of Internet postings about his other fraudulent business activities. His efforts to conceal his identity by running his “corporation” through a small town several hours away were exposed with a simple visit to the location and a photocopied form.

Result: With the identity of the principal now known, the attorney was able to draft correspondence warning him to “cease and desist” from contacting the client or his customers.