Yikes,
IT doesn't matter who takes the photo or video, body cams are video, if they have the information from someplace it's still relevant.
IF the architectural firm is being paid to visit and review the site, IMO any infraction is on them even if they didn't see it, because they are being paid to catch it for the client.
Thus the fact something wrong happen IMO it's their fault! Don't need a picture for proof, simply the buck stops with the architect, because if the client is paying them to oversee the contractors and work / project. IMO can't claim not doing your job.
Own what you get paid for, That is just my opinion, the court IMO is there to just put a price for compensation.
Yeah, but it actually doesn't work that way under most contracts or in real life. Most clients don't pay enough construction observation fee to the architect to provide sufficient observation time to catch all the contractor's infractions. So instead, the amount, and the limitations, of expected review get specified in the owner-architect contract.
If the contractual goal of architectural observation was to catch ALL the contractor's mistakes for them, then the only way to approach 100% certainty of catching everything is to have a 1:1 ratio of inspectors to laborers, performing continuous inspection. There are very few owners willing to pay for that.
Instead, most of us are are contracted to provide "periodic observation", which means we won't see everything that gets installed and hidden in between those times. Most owner-architects contract list the number of required site observations/intervals, and the level of review is for "general conformance in accordance with the contract documents" utilizing the architect's "ordinary standard of care", and the contracts specifically exclude "exhaustive or continuous inspections".
Furthermore, we may get called out for a special site visit to review just one specific problem, and the owner does not pay us to review the entire site while we're at it. Example:
In 2003, I had a large project where I was called out to visit the south end of the site to specifically review a framing problem/RFI. That's all I looked at that day, because that's all they called me out for; it was not one of the regularly scheduled "periodic inspections for general conformance". Meanwhile, that same day they were backfilling a basement retaining wall at the north end of the site, which I did not visit. In 2004 there was a storm that flooded a portion of the basement due to the poor installation. After forensic review, it turns out they did not install the burrito drain and waterproofing correctly before backfilling.
The contractor claimed that because I had stepped foot onsite on the day of backfill in 2003, I was responsible for having inspected and therefore approved (because I raised no objections) the wall drainage system at time of backfill. However, my project logs for the visit showed that the Purpose of Visit/ Items Observed was limited to "structural framing for RFI #48", indicating I was not reviewing, nor anywhere near, the backfilled wall.