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Classic investigation assignments involve locating persons or witnesses, providing statements and interviews, researching asset determinations, compiling personal and business background reports and conducting surveillances.
Please request the firm's price sheet for fees and information packages available in the above areas, along with a statement of hourly rates.
An elderly woman with diminished mental capacity is evicted from her filthy home of fifty years for non payment of about $1500 in property taxes. This was not handled in an optimal way by Social Services. She is apparently now homeless, with no known heirs, no resources. It is determined that after the county sells her home at auction, there is $400,000 left which belongs to her, if she can claim it within the year statutory limit. Nearly a year has gone by, there is one week left, and we are hired by the County to find this woman who has an extremely common name and about whom nothing is known. Our search for her takes us through the homeless communities of the San Gabriel Valley, aid organizations, churches, all neighbors, nearby businesses, etc. With one day left, we succeed.
When a garment district business was destroyed in an arson fire, through extensive surveillance we tracked the owners to a warehouse which held most of the pre-fire inventory.
DB&A helped defend what was once the largest builder of mall and regional shopping centers in CA, maybe the US, The Ernest W. Hahn Company, later known as Trizec-Hahn, from lawsuits brought by aging construction workers in regard to asbestos use. As Hahn essentially closed operations in the 1980s, we had to locate and interview key executives and find documentation and plans from over twenty years ago.
For NBC News, DB&A provided their investigation services during the O.J. Simpson preliminary hearing, before they staffed up for the trial. Any interesting people who could be connected to and possibly comment on any key figure involved in the hearing needed to be identified and located, often with complete background packages as well. Subjects included O.J.'s and Nicole's neighbors through history, teammates, highschool cheerleaders, homecoming court members, business partners and all family relatives. Additionally, associates or peers of any expert presented in the hearing were needed for comment, and experts were needed for NBC in all key evidence areas.
We are hired by the attorneys for Lamborghini to help them stop the unlicensed and unauthorized duplication of Lamborghini vehicles by kit car makers. We research the web and other resources, set up appointments, pose as buyers, obtain various types of evidence in regard to kits, counterfeit parts, decals, emblems, etc.
The Boards of Directors of various firms have hired us to very carefully explore claims of executive officer malfeasance through supervised employee interviews and monitored additional research.
A large theft of oriental rugs from the auctioneers renting an insured warehouse prior to a "warehouse sale" triggered an investigation by DB&A that tracked the subjects through prior history around the nation and proved that similar robberies had occurred a half dozen times before to the same auctioneers in different wide flung locales, and the list of stolen merchandise in these other instances was often identical.
When a leading mob bookie was convicted of racketeering in Florida, he sued his attorney for malpractice and resulting defamation of character. DB&A handled the malpractice insurance defense by working to verify the appropriateness of the verdict and by finding the obscure public records of a bookmaking past not known to the federal investigators.
For a California Indian Tribe working to build a casino on their lands, DB&A examined the background of prospective developers, operations managers and building contractors. A surprising percentage of the possibilities were found to have histories of problems involving continual budget overruns, unpaid subcontractors and unusually high amounts of litigation. One team of prospective developers was linked to an out-of-control project in an eastern state where local newspapers claimed they were associates of organized crime operations.
When music companies battled over the rights to each song in a catalog of rhythm and blues oldies, DB&A had to locate and interview numerous old music figures to sort out conflicting written and oral agreements.
When a well-off elderly person changes the will at the last moment, leaving much of the estate to the live-in caretaker or to a new spouse decades younger, DB&A often gets brought in by attorneys for the disinherited family members to investigate the appropriateness of the will change. DB&A also works for some of the busiest probate administrators in SoCal. DB&A has assisted in finding heirs in numerous instances where there was no will and initial efforts by administrators failed.
For the opening of the Elmira, NY, War Birds Airplane Museum and a special B-17 exhibit, DB&A located certain B-17 flyers once imprisoned together in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, working from an original list of partial names.
DB&A provides all premises liability investigation services for several major Southern California retailers, including Toys R Us and The Limited Stores, and a major premises liability insurer, interviewing employees and customer witnesses, photographing accident sites, doing plaintiff backgrounds and subrosa.
In a drug product liability case on behalf of client Bayer Aspirin, we were asked to find an original 1979 bottle of a competing product, with the original drug still inside and the original label intact. Though it seemed impossible, this item was finally located in a drug store product museum in upstate New York. |