Interpretation of shoe wear patterns in a personal injury case.

In the course of a personal injury case, a shoe having a broken sole was examined to determine if the sole was broken when its wearer suffered a serious fall or if the sole had been broken prior to the fall (and therefore could have caused the accident). The analysis of scratches and other manifestations of wear, as well as the presence of waterstaining in the shoe's lining, indicated that the broken sole had not resulted from the wearer's fall but had existed for some time previous to that accident.