Getting the whole surveillance video when the other side shows only part

Attorney Answer

Through your lawyer, using the court's discovery process. Once a lawsuit is on file, your side can demand the complete recording, and if the other side promised to produce it and handed over only part, your lawyer can ask the court to order the rest. Some of those steps have short deadlines. If no suit has been filed yet, the step that matters is a written demand that the business keep all of the footage, because video is routinely overwritten. You are entitled to ask your lawyer, in writing, what has been requested and what came back.

Demanding the recording. A surveillance recording is electronically stored information, and a party to a lawsuit can demand it. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 2031.010(e):

(e) A party may demand that any other party produce and permit the party making the demand, or someone acting on the demanding party’s behalf, to inspect, copy, test, or sample electronically stored information in the possession, custody, or control of the party on whom demand is made.

When only part comes back. Which motion fits depends on the other side's written response, which your lawyer has. If it said it would produce the recording and then did not produce all of it, Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 2031.320(a) applies:

(a) If a party filing a response to a demand for inspection, copying, testing, or sampling under Sections 2031.210, 2031.220, 2031.230, 2031.240, and 2031.280 thereafter fails to permit the inspection, copying, testing, or sampling in accordance with that party’s statement of compliance, the demanding party may move for an order compelling compliance.

If the response itself was incomplete, the motion is one to compel a further response, and it has a strict deadline. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 2031.310(c):

(c) Unless notice of this motion is given within 45 days of the service of the verified response, or any supplemental verified response, or on or before any specific later date to which the demanding party and the responding party have agreed in writing, the demanding party waives any right to compel a further response to the demand.

Order matters. In New Albertsons, Inc. v. Superior Court, 168 Cal. App. 4th 1403 (2008), a supermarket slip-and-fall, the Court of Appeal held that the trial court could not impose evidence or issue sanctions over missing surveillance recordings, because no order compelling production had been violated and the plaintiffs had not moved to compel in time. The same court said the jury could still be told it may infer that intentionally destroyed evidence was unfavorable to the party that destroyed it.

If footage was erased. California protects a party whose electronic records are lost through routine operation. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 2023.030(f):

(f) (1) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), or any other section of this title, absent exceptional circumstances, the court shall not impose sanctions on a party or any attorney of a party for failure to provide electronically stored information that has been lost, damaged, altered, or overwritten as the result of the routine, good faith operation of an electronic information system.

(2) This subdivision shall not be construed to alter any obligation to preserve discoverable information.

That protection has a limit. In Victor Valley Union High School Dist. v. Superior Court, 91 Cal. App. 5th 1121 (2023), the Court of Appeal held that it does not shield a party that lets electronic evidence be lost once it is already under a duty to preserve it, and that the duty arises when litigation is reasonably foreseeable, which can be before any claim or lawsuit is filed. A court chooses the remedy and must consider lesser ones first, so no particular sanction is guaranteed.

There is no separate lawsuit for destroyed evidence. The Supreme Court of California held in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center v. Superior Court, 18 Cal. 4th 1 (1998), that the remedies belong in the case itself, chiefly discovery sanctions and the inference a jury may draw. Cal. Evid. Code § 413:

In determining what inferences to draw from the evidence or facts in the case against a party, the trier of fact may consider, among other things, the party’s failure to explain or to deny by his testimony such evidence or facts in the case against him, or his willful suppression of evidence relating thereto, if such be the case.

Your lawyer. You hired the lawyer and are entitled to know what has been done. Ask in writing, and if you remain unsatisfied, another lawyer can review the file and tell you what a change of lawyers would mean for your case.

What you can do

1. Ask your lawyer in writing whether a lawsuit has been filed, whether a demand for the complete recording has been served, and what the written response said.

2. Ask whether the business was sent a written demand to preserve all of the footage, and when.

3. Ask whether what was produced is the complete recording from every camera covering the area, and what times it covers.

4. Write down your own account of the fall and the minutes before it while you remember it, and keep it for your lawyer.

5. Most lawyers offer a brief initial call at no cost, and a few minutes on your specific facts is worth more than any general guidance, including this page.

⏱ Time limits apply. Cal. Code Civ. Proc. § 335.1 allows two years to file a suit for a personal injury, and the 45-day limit in § 2031.310(c) runs from the other side's verified response. Your lawyer has the dates; ask what they are rather than counting them yourself.