She may have lost a case due to a faulty animation exhibit in court, but Victoria Webster, a senior litigation counsel at Yamaha Motor Corp. USA, got in the last word.

Webster and her outside counsel have won the Yancey Memorial Award from the International Association of Defense Counsel for an article they wrote exploring the use of computer-generated animation in the courtroom across all 50 states.

The law is all over the place in the states, Webster told Corporate Counsel Friday.

Webster said she has served 31 years as a product liability lawyer for California-based Yamaha, defending the company in cases on everything from jet skis and all-terrain vehicles to snow mobiles and golf carts. She is based in Newman, Georgia, where Yamaha has a manufacturing facility, but litigates across the country.

She said the impetus for the article was a jet ski and boat collision case in which the judge allowed the plaintiffs attorneys to depict the plaintiff's recollections in an animation that was not based on facts.

Speed and timing were key elements in the crash, Webster said, and the plaintiff did not know either one. But the judge allowed the showing of a precise animation based on the plaintiff's estimates and recollections.

They showed it no less than 20 times during trial, Webster said. And the jury bought it hook, line and sinker. It swayed the jury to return a multimillion-dollar verdict for the plaintiff, she said.

Webster said even the judge commented at the end on how a simple depiction seemed to become the entire case. But he didn't have the initiative or courage to overturn the verdict, she added.

Webster's client appealed, but the case eventually settled without any evaluation of the animation's use in court.

With the case as her impetus, Webster urged, and her outside counsel, Fred Trey Bourn III agreed, that they do a study on how all states treat animation evidence.

Bourn is a partner in the Jackson, Mississippi, office of Butler Snow. They were aided by associates Carol Montgomery and Caroline Walker of Butler Snow's Birmingham office.

Their work resulted in a compendium called The Use of Computer-Generated Animations and Simulations at Trial. The study cites various cases and statutes to show how different states treat such evidence.

What the study found is that computer-generated animations and simulations are being used increasingly in courtrooms across the country, sometimes with little guidance on what is and is not permissible. Animations have been allowed based on provable facts, on expert opinions and, in cases such as Webster's, simply on lay testimony from a witness.