Posted on 06/14/2006 6:53:25 AM PDT by freepatriot32
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A nanny who was arrested after police viewed hidden camera video recordings that appeared to show her shaking a 5-month-old baby is suing the recording system's manufacturer.
Claudia Muro, 32, alleges that distorted camera footage wrongfully led to her arrest and imprisonment. She was arrested in October 2003 and spent two years awaiting trial before prosecutors dropped the case because of concerns about the tape.
The footage was broadcast on television around the country.
The lawsuit was filed against Boca Raton-based Tyco Fire & Security, according to a report in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
Broward County prosecutors in March said experts they had consulted concluded the footage was not reliable as evidence because its videotape was time-lapsed, meaning that the movements that appeared to be rough shaking might not have been as violent as they appeared.
Robert McKee, Muro's civil attorney, told the Sun-Sentinel that the footage was misleading and caused his client to spend a long time in jail. He said there should be a warning to the consumer about the images.
Messages left by The Associated Press early Wednesday for McKee and Allison Gilman, Muro's criminal defense attorney, were not immediately returned.
Nor was a message left for the communications department of Tyco. A company official had told the Sun-Sentinel it does not discuss pending litigation.
Is this suggesting that the broadcast was not the source of the tort? How can the manufacturer be held responsible for what the buyer did with the property?
Knock, knock??
We knew this was coming.
Yep, and next will be the book about the suit about the hidden-camera manufacturer. And then after that will be the movie about the book about the suit...
Oh jeeze, I definitely have to start a "Stupidity out of Florida" ping list.
How would they have made the payments on their new BMWs???
The critical missing piece of information is whether or not the infant suffered any sort of injury or trauma, and that should have been determined by any medical examination, either by the child's pediatrician or via hospital records.
This doesn't pass the sniff test, IMHO.
Tort reform = loser pays.
This is the reason for tort reform.
This is 100% an intimidation suit.
Keep in mind if there are punative damages the state gets a significant piece of that award.
The camera maker's attorney fee award should be charged to the plaintiff lawyer PERSONALLY.
I wonder if she had an explanation for the full body slams? Lens malfunction making objects look more wobbly from a distance or something?
This is exactly why my child will never be in day care.
Uhhhh, so the fact this Nanny's handa and the baby's shoulders were shown to be eight inches behind the baby's bend over head on one frame and then eight inches in front of the baby's bent back head in the next means absolutely nothing?
Why not sure George Eastmann's estate for inventing the camera? How about John Logie Baird's estate since it was shown on a TV?
I have always said you can't pay someone to love your children.
I am also aware that single parents need daycare...
In Florida there are many areas of law where the user pays the lawyer fee.
The problem is that it DOES NOT MATTER AGAINST A PENILESS PLAINTIFF.
This is a suit the lawyer should never have taken. What this is about is extending the "proximate cause" concept to absurdity. (ie suing a ski mask maker for a bank robbery)
The goal here is to force a settlement and use the PR to push BIGGER suits for the law firm.
If people want to be USEFUL, file "friend of the court" memoranda when the camera company files a motion to dismiss.
"Warning: There is a hidden camera above this warning label. The images it takes may..."
Absurd...
The lawyers bringing this case to court should be disbarred.
Given that it was time-lapse, she wasn't "slamming" the child on the floor -- in reality, she was gently lowering the child to the floor, raising the child, then gently lowering the child to the floor, over and over.
That's her story and she's sticking to it.
Cases like this could easily be dismissed, but the people who know how to do this are lawyers, who don't make any money by doing that.
It was proven that the infant did not suffer any injury or truma.
The problem was that the time lapse aspect of the footage turned the picture of a nanny playing with the baby into a picture of someone abusing the baby.
The nanny has a case, but not against the camera manufacturer. I think the couples attorney (or prosecuter), who should have done a better job of checking it out before filing with the court.
This has been a miscarrage of justice thus far.
Ah! I gotcha--it was just a fun game she and the little tot were playing, and that dang nanny cam malfunctioned and made it look bad.
And when we saw the kid's neck whipping back and forth, in reality, the child was just performing several advanced yoga moves designed to over extend the neck. Gotcha!
Dang technology! ;-)
"Oh jeeze, I definitely have to start a "Stupidity out of Florida" ping list."
Here's one for you, I posted it on another thread earlier today:
"Early this morning I was listening to KRLD radio in Dallas, they were discussing the Mav's game with another station in florida. They were talking about how the Florida people were all dressed in white. The florida DJ (a woman) made the comment, "we were dressed in white because we wanted to look like the Ku Klux Klan so the Mav's would feel at home." What the hell was that supposed to mean????"
What you need to know is that the system didn't record at a real-time rate of 30 frames per second, but at something like 5 frames a second. So everything looked exagerrated and outrageously violent.
I saw a re-enactment of this specific case on a Court TV show a couple of months ago. They showed somebody in a split-screen of 5 frames per second and 30 frames per second doing simple stuff like picking up a doll and putting it in a crib, and it showed exactly how false this "evidence" was.
Yes, I say the camera/recorder manufacturer is solely responsible for her imprisonment.
Heck, I would of welcomed a nuclear strike on their headquarters.
Maybe the Texans can wear pink tutus to make the South Florida fruitcakes feel at home.
I bet the nanny is pretty shook up!
Ok found a link for a basis of my earlier post:
=======
The only new development was that an actual expert pointed out that time lapse video had been snapped- off at between four and seven images a second, compared to 60 images on a television-quality tape, creating a herky-jerky illusion.
''There was no assault,'' said Grant Fredericks, a former police officer and a noted instructor in forensic video analysis. ``It was so obvious to me and obvious to any forensic video analyst who looked at the tape.''
Indeed, an expert hired by the Broward state attorney's office came to the same conclusion.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/columnists/fred_grimm/14147087.htm
"How can the manufacturer be held responsible for what the buyer did with the property? "
Same argument applies to firearms... or anything for that matter...
LMAO! Too bad the Texas DJ's didn't think of that one.
The Texas DJ should have told the Florida DJ they can wear white to the wake after the Mavericks bury the Heat and win the NBA championship!
Just the other day there was some judge on the west side of the state who decided to have his two presenting attorneys settle their case using rock-paper-scissors.
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