Articles Posted in Researching Experts

A forensic engineering expert witness investigates materials, products, structures or components that fail or do not function as intended which may cause personal injury or damage to property. The consequences of failure are dealt with by the law of product liability. The subject is applied most commonly in civil law cases, although may be of use in criminal law cases. Generally the purpose of a forensic engineering investigation is to locate cause or causes of failure with a view to improve performance or life of a component, or to assist a court in determining the facts of an accident.

Methods used in forensic investigations include reverse engineering, inspection of witness statements, a working knowledge of current standards, as well as examination of the failed component itself.

Excerpted from wikipedia.com.

LawGuru.com poses the question “What constitutes an”expert witness”? Attorney Jonathon Moseley answers:

This is an interesting question, and this is one of the biggest reasons why “pro se” plaintiffs (without an attorney ) often lose in court. A “fact witness” is someone who simply testifies to what they saw, or heard, or know. “The light was red, when the car went flying through.” That is simply a fact. ANYTHING which requires some opinion or analysis or conclusion, however, requires an “expert witness.” For example, “If the brakes were in good condition, the driver should have been able to stop in time and avoid the accident.” Says who? That is not a fact that can be observed and testified about. That is an opinion (says the law). Actually it is an engineering and scientific conclusion based upon the laws of physics and the characteristics of cars. However, it takes an “expert” to testify to that, or you cannot introduce any such evidence into the trial.

Or: “It will cost $5000 to repaint the house because the contractor botched the job.” Says who? The court will not allow such testimony, to establish the cost of repainting, unless you have an “expert witness” to express his educated OPINION as to how much money it will cost to repaint (how much time, how big the house is, whether painting certain areas are easy or hard, etc.)

In The Michigan Law Blog, Michael J. Hamblin writes:

Required Qualifications for Expert Witnesses in Michigan Business Litigation Cases

In many business litigation cases, winning depends on the testimony of an expert witness who supports a party’s theory of the case or damage calculations. When testifying, the expert gives his or her opinion on one or more topics at issue in the case.

The licensing expert witness opines in cases regarding the multi-billion dollar intellectual property market. In Licensing Overview, Justia.com describes patent licensing:

A patent is a grant of a property right to an inventor for an invention that is new, inventive, and useful or industrially applicable. Patents are issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A patent gives the inventor an exclusive right to the invention for a specific period of time. Because a patent grants an inventor the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling the invention, only a licensing agreement between the patent owner and another person or company will allow the use or sale of the invention by someone other than the patent holder.

Companies that do a great deal of research and development of new products and technologies that become patented may enter into cross-licensing agreements, whereby two parties share patents without paying the normally required licensing fee.

The licensing expert witness opines in cases regarding the multi-billion dollar intellectual property market. In Licensing Overview, Justia.com describes trademark licensing:

Trademarks are also protected intellectual property, generally in the form of a word, symbol, shape, or any sign, that is affixed to a product to indicate its source and distinguish it from other goods. A trademark holder can license that trademark, often referred to as a mark, to an individual or entity, who may then distribute products under that mark. Without a licensing agreement between those parties, anyone using a mark protected as the property of another would be subject to penalties for trademark infringement.

Intellectual property recognizes trademark rights in part to protect the public, as people come to associate a trademark with certain products and can then rely on the fact that goods bearing that mark will be consistently of the same origin and quality when they make purchasing decisions. Therefore, trademark holders must enforce their right to use the mark, and if they fail to do so, may be found to have abandoned the trademark, leaving it open to use by anyone.

The licensing expert witness opines in cases regarding the multi-billion dollar intellectual property market. In Licensing Overview, Justia.com explains:

A company or person with intellectual property protected by law who wishes to license that property enters into a licensing agreement with a user, and that agreement becomes a contract, governed by applicable contract laws, which can vary from state to state. International licensing agreements also may be subject to additional regulations, depending upon what is being licensed and how it will be used.

An intellectual property license also varies with what is being licensed, but generally has several common components, including a specified length of time, agreement as to where the license is valid, provision for renewal, and any limitations the licensor deems important to the agreement. Sometimes, other laws will limit what limitations may be imposed in a licensing agreement. In most licensing agreements, the licensee pays a fee to the licensor in order to use his or her intellectual property for financial gain.

Forensic psychiatry expert witness Dr. Roy Lubit is board certified in forensic psychiatry, child psychiatry and general psychiatry. He writes this on forensic evaluations:

Critiquing adverse forensic evaluations is a special art. It is inadequate to simply produce a competing evaluation, so that there is now one on each side. Key weaknesses in many reports include the expert simultaneously making speculative comments and ignoring important material that was available which contradicted their conclusions. I have even seen evaluators ignore the significance of data they reported in the body of their report. Other common problems include failing to access available information and simply accepting a litigants’ presentation of their histories as true.

Adverse expert reports can often be destroyed by carefully showing that the report’s conclusions are simply speculations supported by cherry picking of the data, and that a full consideration of the available information demonstrates that other hypotheses are more likely to be correct. This technique has even be successful when I was hired by one side to critique the report of a neutral evaluator.

In Assessing the Truth: How Forensic Psychiatrists and Psychologists Evaluate Litigants, Dr. Mark Levy, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and forensic psychiatry expert witness writes:

Psychological and Neuropsychological testing provides an objective means of sorting out how much embellishment or minimization of symptoms may exist. From a psychological perspective, there is always a concern in personal injury litigation and criminal litigation as to the extent one may be exaggerating their symptoms. In divorce and custody proceedings, the opposite may be true. Whenever brain injury is at issue, there may be motivational issues that are difficult to for the plaintiff to overcome and for the examiner to assess…

A competent psychologist has to try to sort these issues out. How much is the underlying personality structure affecting the symptom presentation? How much (or little) of a brain injury has really occurred?

From the blog of medical expert witness Dr. Barry E. Gustin, MD, MPH, FAAEP:

Locality Rules and Qualifying Medical Experts

When it became clear by the 1980’s that hospitals were being built in rural areas, that demographic trends indicated sufficient medical staffing in rural areas, that mass communication and mass transit eliminated the disadvantages of isolation, that all U.S. physicians were held to the national standard for their respective specialty, then the original rationale for the locality and state rules had disappeared, and the courts began to rely on national standards for each given specialty.

From the blog of medical expert witness Dr. Barry E. Gustin, MD, MPH, FAAEP:

Locality Rules and Qualifying Medical Experts
By the 1970’s, jurisdictions began modifying the locality rule. One problem the courts faced had to do with whether a medical specialist practicing in a rural area was in any way deprived of the conditions enjoyed by medical specialists practicing in urban areas where teaching centers were located. Their concern was that if the answer was yes, then eliminating the locality rule might discourage medical specialists from practicing in rural areas. Courts eventually decided to compromise and instead of adopting a national standard, they converted the locality rule to a state standard. But over time, it became clear that this made no sense because the standards were truly national standards, and so courts began abandoning the locality and statewide rule for all physicians.