In Guidelines For The Expert Witness, Judge Timothy T. Daley, Family and Youth Court Judge Province of Nova Scotia, offers pretrial preparation guidelines including:
Attend by court ordered summons or subpoena only.
The expert witness attends court at the request of a party or by court summons or subpoena. The expert witness should consider being formally ordered to attend rather than attending voluntarily. There are advantages to attending by court order.
Thoracic surgery expert witnesses may opine on pulmonology, chest medicine, respiratory medicine, and more. The American Association for Thoracic Surgery has adopted a statement of qualifications for expert witnesses and guidelines for behavior of AATS members when acting as experts in the legal system including:
The physician expert witness should state the basis of his or her testimony or opinion, and whether it is based on personal experience, specific clinical references, evidence-based guidelines, or a generally accepted opinion in the specialty field.
Read more: http://www.aats.org/
School safety expert witnesses may provide testimony regarding school violence, school crisis preparedness training, and school crisis services, as well as related topics. In Fight, Flight or Lockdown – Teaching Students and Staff to Attack Active Shooters could Result in Decreased Casualties or Needless Deaths, authors Michael S. Dorn and Stephen Satterly, Jr., of Safe Havens International write on incidents where victims are trapped by an active shooter.
Mike Dorn serves as the Executive Director of Safe Havens International, a non-profit school safety center. He has authored and co-authored 26 books on school safety and have served as a university police lieutenant, school district police chief and as the lead expert for the nation’s largest state government Pre K-20 school safety center. His articles may be found here: http://www.safehavensinternational.org/resources/articles/.
In Screen a Medical Expert Witness with 5 Easy Questions, Mednick Associates writes that “Locating a medical expert witness to provide an objective opinion is a crucial, make or break moment for your case. Just spending the hours and energy searching for and locating a medical expert who will review your case file is not enough. Asking the right questions via a proper screening process is as important as the search itself.”
The five questions, including “Will you testify?,” may be found here: www.mednickassociates.
Bus safety expert witnesses may testify on commercial vehicles, school bus safety, and bus maintenance, among other topics. In Screening School Bus Safety and Security Expert Witnesses, Mike Dorn writes:
While there are fortunately many well qualified and highly credible expert witnesses who are men and women of integrity, it can sometimes be difficult for busy attorneys and insurance personnel to sort out the best from those who are questionable in any particular field of expertise.
Mike Dorn serves as the Executive Director of Safe Havens International, a non-profit school safety center. He has authored and co-authored 26 books on school safety and have served as a university police lieutenant, school district police chief and as the lead expert for the nation’s largest state government Pre K-20 school safety center. His articles may be found here: http://www.safehavensinternational.org/resources/articles/.
Patents expert witnesses may opine on patent infringement, software patents, invention patents, and more. In the news this week, MobileMedia Ideas LLC won a patent case against Apple Inc. in the Wilmington, Delaware District Court. The jury decided that Apple infringed on patents for electronics in handheld devices.
The MobileMedia website states:
MobileMedia Ideas is the patent portfolio licensor of inventions adopted by manufacturers of smart phones, mobile phones and other portable devices including personal computers, laptops, netbooks, personal media players, e-book readers, cameras and hand-held game consoles.
In Four Reasons Why The Location Of A Medical Expert Witness Is Becoming Less Important, Diane Manders of Mednick Associates writes:
The physical location of a medical expert witness, while in no way related to the competency of the witness, has always been a concern of attorneys litigating medical, health, toxic tort or injury cases. Conventional wisdom says the closer the expert is to the venue of a trial, the higher credibility they will have with a jury. Proximity, like it or not, tends to breed confidence and eliminates the question on why an attorney had to “go to the other side of the country” to prove his/her case.
However, as the world has grown smaller so has the potential stigma of an out of state or out of region medical expert witness.
In BECOMING AN EXPERT WITNESS & DEVELOPING YOUR CURRICULUM VITA OR RÉSUMÉ, Hallie Bongar White & Jane Larrington of the The Southwest Center For Law And Policy offer a template for Writing A Curriculum Vita or Résumé. The Southwest Center For Law And Policy is a non-profit organization providing legal training and technical assistance for tribal law enforcement, courts, prosecutors, community health care professionals, victim advocates, social services, and community members. SWCLAP hosts the National Tribal Trial College.
Ms. White is an attorney and Executive Director of the Southwest Center for Law and Policy. Ms. Larrington is a reference librarian at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law and a staff attorney at the Southwest Center for Law and Policy.
Read more: http://www.swclap.org/pdfs/EXPERTWITNESS.pdf
Real estate appraisal expert witnesses may write reports and testify on commercial appraisals, fair market value, and residential real estate appraisal.
On its website, The Appraisal Institute offers Appraiser News Online, the Appraisal Institute’s free weekly e-newsletter that provides ongoing coverage of industry trends, legislative issues and regulatory developments affecting appraisers. The Appraisal Institute is a leader in residential and commercial real estate appraisal education. Webinars include Appraising Distressed Commercial Real Estate: Here We Go Again.
More info: http://www.appraisalinstitute.org/store/c-23-webinar-recordings.aspx
In Help! My New House Is Falling Down, architect Peter Lattey writes that uncovering construction defects requires an expert to discover the cause of damage.
A homeowner walks into your office and says “My new house is falling apart and I want to sue the bum that built it.”
As a smart lawyer, you quickly decide that this may be your next money making case and you decide to find out what the case is all about. Being a prudent person, you do a bit of research before you take on the case. Just as an emergency room doctor does a triage on new cases to decide how each new patient is to be treated, a smart lawyer needs to do the same on new construction defect cases.
