New Jersey Appellate Division Holds That a Defendant is Only Required to Produce Surveillance Evidence After the Plaintiff Has Been Deposed

On September 3, 2015, the New Jersey Appellate Division reiterated the notion that trial courts should take a balanced approach when it comes to the discoverability of surveillance evidence obtained for purposes of litigation.

In Mernick v. McCutchen, the Appellate Division was tasked with assessing whether surveillance videos of a plaintiff were protected from discovery due to the work product doctrine. The plaintiff was injured in a car accident, and after the plaintiff filed her lawsuit, the defendants took surveillance videos of the purportedly injured plaintiff.  In their discovery responses, the defendants acknowledged that they possessed the surveillance videos but refused to produce the videos until after the plaintiff had been deposed. As a result, the plaintiff’s counsel refused to produce his client for deposition until the videos were provided. Read the rest of this entry »