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connected with certain communities and can trade on personal favors with lawenforcement and other officials. Your company and its carriers should carefullyconsider the benefits that these additional specialists could bring to your team.G. Preserving All EvidenceIn addition to documents, electronic information, photographs, and videos, care must betaken to preserve the status quo at the accident scene itself, lock down physicalevidence such as equipment and parts, and ensure a legally sufficient chain of custodyfor all evidence. Often, investigating agencies such as OSHA will gather and retainmaterials from the site, which can present challenges later when it is time forinspections and testing.Experts should have input into developing evidencepreservation recommendations.State and federal courts will impose substantial penalties against companies that arefound to have spoliated evidence. Most of the time spoliation is unintentional, but thisfactor may not matter when opposing parties seek sanctions. Spoliation orders can alsoinclude “adverse inference” jury instructions.H. Adding Legal FirepowerThe case discussed above took many twists and turns, some of which were unique andunforeseeable. Beyond retention of many of the non-legal consultants discussedabove, defense counsel also eventually vetted and retained several different attorneys –legal specialists – to round out the outside counsel team. Though the larger legal team