Litigation_And_Insurance_Support

Blue Heron Investigations has been working closely with attorneys

and

insurance companies for

many years. We’ve listed some of the

services

offer those professions below. Scroll down the

page to

learn more

about our

services. If you’re an attorney that specializes

in either family

employment

law, you may wish to go back to our

services page and

click

on either

“Domestic

Issues” or “Employment

Matters” to see some

of the

additional

services we offer that are

more

specific to those areas.

BACKGROUND CHECKS

Oftentimes, b

ackground checks provide a

valuable

source of

information

prior to a trial or

deposition. We can check for civil or

criminal matters

involving the subject of the investigation in

virtually

any

county or state

within

the United States. These checks produce

clues to

the subject’s

past and

current activities that would have

otherwise gone

unnoticed,

reveal a litigious

history, and

identify

credibility issues among

other

things. We use a variety

of sources

for our background

checks,

some of

which are proprietary or are

otherwise restricted or denied to

the public.

Each is

tailored to the

specific

needs of the client.

(While conducting a surveillance related to a child custody matter, we followed the woman

shown

in this

image to a residence

where she visited the man seated next to her. We later

identified him

and found him

to be a registered predatory sex offender

who had been found

guilty of, among

other

offenses, a felony

charge of possession of pornography involving

minors. Other

convictions

included convictions for

burglary, illegal transportation of firearms,

criminal damage to property,

contributing to the

delinquency of

minors, and other offenses. A

background search on the

woman, mother to our client's child (shown in

the picture

next to the

sex offender) revealed

convictions for open bottle, forging checks, motor vehicle

tampering,

and driving without a

license.

Police reported additional

incidents involving harassment, theft,

and possession of drug

paraphernalia among other

things. A background check on the father

to the

woman's other child

revealed convictions for nearly a dozen burglaries and a

domestic

issue. He was in

prison at the

time of our inquiry. A background check on a man believed to

have spent the night with

the

woman during our surveillance revealed half a dozen burglary

convictions, and about another

dozen

convictions for thefts,

DUIs, vehicle thefts, criminal

damage to property and disorderly

conduct. We had

simply been hired to conduct surveillance

ensure that the little boy (shown

above) was always

supervised by his grandparents

, as was

court ordered,

when visiting his

mother. He wasn't)

FORENSIC PHOTOGRAPHY

Thomas Goodpaster, the state issued license holder for Blue Heron

Investigations, has an

extensive formal education in photography.

He’s been a member of both the Professional

Photographers of

America

and

Evidence Photographers International Council. He’s

even written a

nationally

published

article

on forensic photography.

Throughout the

years, he’s

photographed

hundreds of vehicles,

intersections, slip and

fall

scenes, and

products for insurance

defense

purposes. Admittedly,

not all

of those

photographic

assignments required the skills of a

professional

photographer.

However, many were challenging and could

not have been

accomplished with

much of the equipment used by many

of the

detective

agencies in the area.

Not only are most detective agencies ill equipped to provide such

services,

relying instead on their

personal (consumer marketed)

cameras,

but the

investigators themselves don’t always have the

requisite skills

necessary to

overcome the problems associated with

the

difficult

assignments. Can

your

current investigator tell you how

a long

focal

length lens will affect the

appearance of a curve

in the

road, how

details in

a dark subject will be lost

when photographed

against a light

background

if corrective measures aren’t

taken, or

even how the

different properties

of film, light, lenses,

shutter

speed, filters, aperture

etc will affect a given

scene? Mr.

Goodpaster uses

much of the

same

photographic equipment

used

by professional

photographers for such

magazines as Time,

Newsweek, and National

Geographic. And where he

needs (or even

recognizes the need for)

specialized equipment, studio,

or a

professional

processor – he knows where

to go.

Employees for the typical large detective agency want to get their

“40" by

putting in long days of

surveillance. Because of this, your

photographic

assignments are oftentimes regarded as “filler”

work (i.

e. put it off until

employee’s looking for a couple of extra hours to

get his “40", or can’t

relocate the person he was watching (but lost)

earlier in the day). We

don’

believe that this is how

your

assignment should be handled.

ROCESS SERVICE

In most cases, it’s more cost effective to hire a “Legal Services”

provider

the area, than a private

detective to “serve papers”.

After all, the

“Legal

Services” provider may get the job done for as

little as $25.00 per

service.

However, we believe we can help you

when those “Legal

Services”

personnel

are unable to locate those

difficult to find people.

Blue Heron Investigations

has

experience

serving countless documents

for a division of a large

metropolitan

county government.

In those cases,

the work was assigned only

after the Sheriff’s Deputies for that county

had

failed

following

multiple

attempts. This was usually the case when

the

person to be

served was no

longer

living at the last known address,

was

otherwise trying to avoid

service. Call the “Legal Services”

providers

with the easy ones; call us for

those that can’t, or won’t,

found.

SKIP TRACING / WITNESS LOCATES

Your “lost” witnesses usually fall into one of three categories, as

follows:

People who aren’t really lost or hiding at all, but just aren’t listed in

the

phone

book. Or, perhaps,

they’ve just moved from their last

known

address recently.

People who are hiding, but not from you.

People who are hiding – from you.

People in the first category can usually be found by someone with

access

to at

least one good

database. Those in the second category

are more

difficult to

locate, but can usually be found with a

little

more effort,

particularly if they’re

not good at the game they’ve

chosen to play. Those

in the

last category,

especially if they’ve given

up their ties (employment,

family etc.) are the most

difficult

to find,

but can still oftentimes be found

by an experienced and

competent

detective willing to get

out and “pound

the pavement”.

Blue Heron Investigations has considerable experience finding

people

from

each category,

including fugitives who’ve gone so far

as to change

both their

names and appearance.

Give us a call to discuss your particular situation; we’ll be happy to

give

you

an assessment

regarding your odds of locating the person

being

sought.

STATEMENTS

We’ve taken hundreds of statements over the years for various

clients

including lawyers, insurance

claims adjusters and a state

government

agency.

One of the major differences you’ll note between our statements,

and

those of

some of our

colleagues, is the reduction of “inaudible”

and

“unintelligible”

notations in the transcribed version

of the

statement.

Those notations are

usually the result of a detective

using inferior

recording

equipment. Blue

Heron Investigations has

made the requisite

investment in equipment

necessary

to ensure

that our statements are

being properly recorded, so that

more of it

can be transcribed in

the end.

SURVEILLANCE

If Blue Heron Investigations specializes in anything at all, it’s in

surveillance.

We have thousands

upon thousands of hours of

experience

watching people

from all different walks of life. If you

search

this site, you’

ll see still images

captured from videotape

footage. These

images

do not

represent a “best of”

collection of

ours. In fact, we felt it

necessary to only

include images where

the

identity of the subject (and

by virtue of the

subject’s identity – our

client’s

identity) was

protected by

choosing images

that were slightly

blurred, distant,

improperly exposed

or otherwise

somehow

protected the

privacy of those

involved.

At Blue Heron Investigations, we believe in communicating with our

clients

about various aspects

of the surveillance itself. Is the

environment in

which

the subject resides or works conducive to

surveillance? Should

another

investigator be called in to assist with

the

surveillance to reduce

the

risks of

either detection or other

unfavorable

circumstance? Should

an authorized

surveillance be

postponed or

discontinued in your best

interests? At Blue

Heron

Investigations, we

will not work

files for days on

end only to send

you a

report indicating that

nothing was observed, or that

eren’

t even certain

that the subject of

the surveillance was

present.

Blue Heron Investigations is equipped with state of the art video

recording

devices suitable for

covert body-worn applications.

Whether

insurance

claimant is working behind a counter at a

retail outlet, an

employee is

spending his afternoons shopping, or a

parent in a child

custody suit is

violating his court order not to drink

by sitting at the bar

getting drunk, we can

document the

activity

from

inside the

establishment

without being detected.

(This insurance claimant alleged a brain injury that precluded his being able to care for himself - He required constant care and

could no longer drive. We followed him to a hardware store, in a town several miles from home, where he shopped for circular

saw blades for a project he was working on. He drove.)

BLUE HERON INVESTIGATIONS

Minnesota's Premier Private Detective Agency

LITIGATION & INSURANCE SUPPORT SERVICES

Image significantly
blurred to protect
the identities of
those shown