Parties in the case against Heartstone Management Inc., Texas City Assisted Living Ltd., IPH Health Care Services Inc. and Dr. Folasade M. Ojo are asking for more time for discovery and to hire medical and nursing home expert witnesses. Christopher Murphy died of acute renal failure and had infected wounds after a fall at the Texas City Heartstone assisted living facility.
The motion was filed before Judge Barbara Roberts, Galveston County Court.
The city of Anchorage, AK, has hired a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, Lou Reiter, as a police procedures expert witness in the case against former Anchorage police officer and convicted serial rapist Anthony Rollins.
Reiter is with the Legal & Liability Risk Management Institute which offers training and services for law enforcement, jails and corrections, and risk managers.
Michigan Lawyer blog author Ed Wesoloski writes that expert witnesses can testify at criminal and civil trials via two-way interactive video under 2012 PA 68, signed into law by Gov. Rick Snyder. The law takes effect June 1 and is expected to reduce travel expenses for experts.
Read more: http://michiganlawyerblog.wordpress.com/author/milw/.
Trucking accidents expert witnesses may provide reports regarding the Department of Transportation (DOT), trucking computer systems, crash-worthiness, trucking insurance, trucking safety, and correlated topics. In the news, Bendix is delivering repair kits for a faulty brake valve to truck manufacturers. Bendix is replacing faulty ATR-6 valves on its commercial vehicle brake systems.
Courthouse News service reports a forensic pathology expert witness will not testify that repeated police Tasering contributed to the death of a schizophrenic man. U.S. Magistrate Judge William Wall ruled in the wrongful death case against Southampton, Suffolk County (NY), police officers and Taser International.
Read more: courthousenews.com.
In the news this week, insurance experts commented on proposed legislation by California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones regarding self insured plans for small employers. The Self-Insurance Industry Institute of America defines self insurance:
Self-Insurance (also referred to as self-funding) is an alternative risk transfer strategy used by tens of thousands of employers across the country to finance their group health care and Workers’ Compensation liabilities. Self-Insurance has become an increasingly attractive option for many employers due to the rising costs associated with health care and Workers’ Compensation commercial insurance.
DNA expert witnesses will oversee tests in the Franklin County, WA, murder case against Tashia Stuart. A Washington State Patrol Crime Lab scientist has been assigned to perform the testing in the trial of Stuart who is accused of shooting her adoptive mother in 2010.
In Last week’s Apple-Samsung lawsuit involves eight patents, 17 products — bid for Nexus ban is based on only a subset, patents expert Florian Mueller writes:
On Saturday, I reported on Apple’s request for a U.S. preliminary injunction against the Samsung Galaxy Nexus (co-developed by Google) based on four patents. At the time, the main complaint was not publicly accessible, but I expected it to involve a broader set of allegations….
For the preliminary injunction bid, Apple focused on only one out of 17 products (all of them are listed further below), and on four out of eight patents.
Securities expert witness Craig McCann, a former SEC economist, is founder of the Securities Litigation and Consulting Group in Fairfax, Va. He testified on behalf of Bobby L. Hayes who was awarded $1.38M from Banc of America Securities, now Merrill Lynch.
In the news this week, brokerage firms are trying to block his testimony as an expert.
In Reasonable Scientific Certainty, document examination expert witness Dennis Ryan writes:
A recent report by the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association (ABA) to their House of Delegates addresses the common term “Reasonable Scientific Certainty.” This term or a variant of the term has been seen frequently in many expert reports and has been called a requirement by many who use our expert reports. The ABA report recommends that this phrase be avoided because it has no scientific meaning.
The ABA report calls this term ambiguous and it appears to be used to measure the degree of confidence of the expert in his or her conclusions. This ambiguity can cause the expert’s conclusions to be misinterpreted by anyone that reads the expert report.
Expert Witness Blog