Hypothetical situation: My extremely valuable racing bicycle, parked on the sidewalk, is run over and crushed by a car speeding out of a parking lot. I don’t get the car’s description or license plate number. However, the hotel next door has a security camera trained right on the spot where it happened.
The police let me file a report but are too busy to pursue it much further.
I ask the hotel to let me review its security camera footage.
I’m not a guest at the hotel, and the incident didn’t happen on hotel property. The hotel has no obligations to me, and assisting me could end up being a major waste of time for the staff. Still, to me their help might potentially be very valuable.
In the real world, under what circumstances is the hotel likely to help me?
I would think they do, I’ve seen business owners volunteer (to non-police, without a warrant/subpoena) security camera footage to assist in car accident investigations before. Without an actual legal requirement it will come down to the personal feelings and opinions of whomever is running the business, though.
IANAL, but…I make quite a bit of money reviewing surveillance videos of the type you describe.
Short answer: Independent business owners usually try to be helpful, at least at first. The problem often is that the attorneys and experts keep coming back to the well and it gets to be a PITA for them. I’ve literally worked from a video that a state trooper shot of the video monitor the day of the incident because the owner got pissed off and just deleted the original from his video system. Unless the owner has some duty to preserve the video, it’s mighty tempting to be able to tell investigators to F*** OFF!
If it’s a chain hotel, there are probably SOPs that address the issue. Again, the company wants to be a good corporate citizen, but once you start opening the digital surveillance vaults you start getting people who want proof that they gave the Girl Scout selling cookies on the sidewalk a $10 bill and not a $5 bill.
Finally, if it’s a typical big corporation with corporate-level video surveillance, they’re going to have all sorts of policies in place to keep the material in-house. Sometimes the video surveillance and video retention policies go on for dozens of pages.
I think most businesses will help you view the footage. A while back I had my wallet stolen and went to the businesses where the cards were used. All the businesses had no problem letting me view the footage at those times and some even printed out stills that I could take with me. Go to the businesses as soon as you can. Many times they have looped recording systems where only the last X days are saved. Unless they’re robbed or something, most businesses don’t need to archive the footage or anything.
If the business is deliberately unhelpful, suggest to them that you could take your case to social media; even Yelp or some other rating site.
Is the bike insured? Maybe the insurance company would be able to get the footage more easily?
If I were the business owner, I’d never allow this without a police/judicial element. There’s no upside.
Scenarios:
Say someone in a situation similar to OP’s recognizes the offending car as a neighbor and goes and breaks neighbor’s nose in a confrontation.
Say the bike-runner-over gets pissed and seeks revenge on the shopkeep for cooperating.
Say this same exact accident happened twice in a day and I accidentally gave some rando the wrong video and there was [unspecified trouble] because of it.
My son got hit by a car a couple of years ago. Basically my son was trying to merge out onto the highway when some idiot tried to zip out from behind him (on the entrance ramp) and go around him, then realized he was about to hit a truck and zipped back, ramming into my son’s car.
The whole thing was caught on the dash cam of a utility truck. The truck drive was happy to show my son the video and also showed it to police, but said he could not give the video to anyone or let them copy it without a court order, as this was company policy.
There’s a good chance you’ll run into the same issue with the hotel. If you’re nice, the manager might let you view it, but the company is likely to have a rule against releasing any video without a court order.
In the real world, common civility would apply. Explain to the hotel manager and see what he says.
In the Brave New world, though, he might be fearful of litigation against him, for privacy issues. He, or the hotel lawyer, might explain to you what might pry loose such a tape, such as a police report or a court order.
If the value of the bike is above a state threshold, there may be a leaving-the-scene warrant.
A guy pulled into my parking lot at work because of problems with his car. His car hit/was hit by another car driven by someone who had just left my building. There were no other customers around.
He ran in and asked who the woman was who’d just left, explaining they’d hit his car. I had no video, but she’d used a credit card and I knew her name, address, phone number, etc.
The guy was livid that I refused to give him the information. I explained why, and that I’d be happy to give the information to law enforcement. He yelled and stomped his feet, but after he left I never heard another thing about the incident.