Electronic Navigation And Litigation: The View From The Bench, The Counsel Table, And The Jury Box

Electronic navigation systems such as GPS, Electronic Chart Displays (“ECDIS”), and Automatic Information Systems (“AIS”) record a wealth of data about a vessel's movements and status in the moments before an accident. Indeed, the Voyage Data Recorder (“VDR”) was specifically designed to collect data from various on board sensors for use in accident investigations. As a result of this capability, electronic navigation data is now frequently presented as evidence in the litigation that often follows maritime accidents.

How the Courts View Electronic Navigation Evidence

By 2004, AIS and VDRs were in common usage on most vessels. Thus, by 2007, a court commented that AIS was a “notable development” that may affect the way vessels communicate in the future. Since the case in 2007, although one court found that AIS data was “not conclusive evidence of individual vessel movements,” the trend is for courts to increasingly rely on navigation data from AIS and VDRs. In a case in 2010, a court noted that the “authenticity and accuracy of the VTS/AIS recording was not disputed.” In 2012, six cases presented AIS/ECDIS/VDR recordings as evidence of vessel positions and movements. In each case, the court accepted electronically recorded evidence without dispute.

In large part, courts have accepted the reliability of electronic navigation data largely because the carriage requirements for electronic navigation systems are well established; their use is widely accepted by the maritime industry; and the systems are generally seen as an extension of existing technology. And importantly, counsel trying cases have themselves become comfortable with the technology and have learned how to effectively present electronic navigation evidence while convincingly explaining the inevitable anomalies and inconsistencies.

Why Use Electronic Navigation Data Accident Investigation and Litigation?

Maritime cases were traditionally presented through paper log books and mariners' eyewitness testimony. There are inherent limitations, however, in the reliability of the testimony of even the most truthful eyewitness. Witnesses often give conflicting versions of events. In the confusion that usually attends a maritime accident, it is not expected that witnesses will exactly concur in their descriptions of what they observed. Thus, it is not uncommon for marinerssaid to be traditionally loyal to their vesselto give irreconcilable testimony with respect to the courses and speeds...