Articles Posted in Researching Experts

Collision analysis expert witnesses may opine regarding accident reconstruction, crashworthiness, collision analysis, and related topics. Here, the Accident Reconstruction Network reports:

General Motors Co is recalling 322,409 model year 2009 and 2010 Chevrolet Impala sedans because front seat belts may not be properly anchored, the automaker and federal regulators said on Friday. No injuries or fatalities have been reported in cases where the seat belts were not securely anchored or twisted, GM said in a letter to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

GM said it will begin asking its Impala customers later this month to bring the sedans to dealerships for inspection and repair if necessary, free of charge. Through mid-August, GM told NHTSA it had received 32 warranty reports of seat belts having separated from their anchorage.

In What is Accident Reconstruction? Dr. Alexander Zhukov, M. Eng., Ph.D., and accident reconstruction expert witness writes:

Accident Reconstruction is a scientific attempt to determine how a traffic accident occurred. It is a procedure by which the circumstances of a traffic collision are proven or estimated by working backward from the resulting damage and evidence. For example, the length of skidmarks, final resting positions of vehicles involved in the crash, and the amount of crush damage to the automobiles can be used to determine, or at least approximate, the speeds and/or directions of travel of the vehicles before the collision.

An Accident Reconstructionist is a person specially trained in using these procedures to determine the collision circumstances. The Reconstructionist is an expert witness usually retained by either the plaintiff or defendant in a lawsuit, who can be of great benefit in cases where fault for a collision is in dispute. Some police agencies have their own personnel trained in accident reconstruction who will be assigned to prepare independent reconstruction reports about particularly severe traffic collisions. Do not assume, however, that the police officer who prepared your accident report is a qualified expert. Most of the time, he is not.

In The Second Coming Of Healthcare Insurance, insurance expert witness Stephen George, MBA-HA, writes:

The business of health care has always been about financing predictable costs. America’s success has always been about her ability to adapt. Adapting to soaring insurance costs is expensive for consumers. In the past, insurance plans were far easier to understand. The market is responding like never before with affordable insurance, hybrid insurance and non-insurance discount plans. We have reached the price point where employers are abandoning benefits. Even large employers are feeling the pinch, but that pinch is a shove for individuals and small employers struggling to buy insurance. It’s not like you have to walk on water to understand these new plans, but praying for guidance is a good idea. Buyers take heed that your plan may exclude catastrophic loss.

This reprint by permission of The Self-Insurer and The Self-Insurer’s Publishing Corp. as it appeared in the July, 2007 Edition

Periodic payment judgments expert witnesses may opine on personal injury settlements, workers compensation case settlements, and wrongful death suit settlements, as well as related issues. A structured settlement may be defined as a court granted contract between a plaintiff as well as a defendant which pays off some amount of money to the plaintiff within regular payment scheme throughout a certain amount of time frame. What eventually may take place is, the person receiving the money, after a few years of repayments, chooses to get a lump sum payment to pay bills or simply to get some extra funds. And at this point, the structured settlement company comes into play. They will provide an agent who will buy the structured settlement contract with a slightly lower price in exchange for providing a large sum of cash at once.

Read more: zasst.com.

Structured settlement expert witnesses may opine on personal injury settlements, workers compensation case settlements, and wrongful death suit settlements, as well as related issues. A structured settlement may be defined as a court granted contract between a plaintiff as well as a defendant which pays off some amount of money to the plaintiff within regular payment scheme throughout a certain amount of time frame. These particular funds are usually to pay for health-related bills as well as the common expenditures of daily living. This normally occurs when there’s an injured party, and the whole process may include pre-trial court meetings and possibly a court hearing may be considered necessary.

Read more: zasst.com.

In Numerical methods with experimental soil response in predicting vibrations from dynamic sources, soil structure expert witness Mark Svinkin writes:

The suggested methods for predicting soil and building vibrations are founded on utilization of the impulse response functions technique for predicting complete vibration records on existing soils, buildings and equipment prior to installation of construction and industrial dynamic sources (Svinkin 1973, 1996). The impulse response function is an output signal of the system based on a single instantaneous impulse input (Bendat and Piersol 1993). These functions are applied for studies of complicated linear dynamic systems with unknown internal structures for which mathematical description is difficult or impossible. In the case under consideration, the dynamic system is the soil medium through which waves propagate outward from sources of construction and industrial vibrations. The input signal of the system is the impulse response of the ground at the place of pile driving, dynamic compaction of soil, or installation of a machine foundation; the output signal is the vibratory response of a location of interest situated on the surface or within the soil stratum, or any point at a building receiving vibrations. Output can be obtained, for example, as the vibration traces for displacements at locations of interest. Actually, these records are experimental Green’s functions.

In Numerical methods with experimental soil response in predicting vibrations from dynamic sources, soil expert witness Mark Svinkin writes:

Construction and industrial dynamic sources, such as pile driving and foundations for impact machines, generate elastic waves in soil which may adversely affect surrounding buildings and sensitive instruments (Targets). The effects of these waves range from visible structural damage to serious disturbance of working conditions for sensitive devices and people. Therefore, legitimate concerns frequently arise about possible ground and structure vibrations before the start of construction activities or installation of machine foundations.

Analytical methods (Miller and Pursey, 1954; Broers and Dieterman, 1992; Hanazato and Kishida, 1992; Wolf, 1994) already exist which give accurate results for certain limited cases, but these methods are applicable only to well defined and simple sites like a half-space or horizontally layered media. Indeed, for the prediction of expected vibrations, it is necessary to have information about the actual soil deposit and to choose a proper soil model to compute vibrations. Computed results from the simple models contain valuable data about general tendencies of wave propagation at a site, but cannot take into account spatial variations of soil properties and produce accurate and complete soil vibration records at any point of interest.

In Identifying the Source of a Power Surge, industrial machinery expert witness Mamoon Alyah, P.E., answers the question “Is it possible to differentiate between lightning related surges and artificially generated electrical surges?”

..If equipment damages consist of failed modems, network cards, TV tuners or other non-power related components, then the damage is likely the result of lightning-related surge that would have been induced on the communication lines. Other forms of power surge could then be eliminated based on available information and other observations. On the other hand, if the damage is limited to power supplies or other power related components, then damage could be the result of either lightning or other forms of power surge.

The events that led up to the claimed equipment damage also provide significant information that can be used to identify the source of a power surge. A lightning related surge has to accompany a thunderstorm, and lightning would be in the area on the date and time of the loss. On the other hand, an artificially generated power surge is typically caused by an event that could either be inside or outside the insured’s premises. Identifying the event that led to the loss is necessary to determine the exact cause and source of the power surge.

In Identifying the Source of a Power Surge, failed components analysis expert witness Mamoon Alyah, P.E., answers the question “Is it possible to differentiate between lightning related surges and artificially generated electrical surges?”

..When the damage is localized and extensive such as blown components, lightning becomes the primary suspect. Lightning is likely the cause when signs of damage indicate a surge with high magnitude, but without enough duration to cause widespread damage. In most cases, a visual inspection can provide significant information about the extent of damage.

In addition to the nature and extent of damage, the type and design of the damaged component can tell a great deal regarding the source of a power surge. Once the exact damaged component (or part) inside a piece of equipment is identified, one can use the information to identify the source of a surge. This is because lightning surges can be conducted (or induced) through any part that connects a piece of equipment to the outside world, including communication ports and power supplies, while an artificially generated power surge can only be conducted through the power supply.

In Chemicals and Cancer: Establishing Causation through Medical Toxicology, forensic toxicology expert witness Nachman Brautbar, M.D. writes:

I. Causation – Definition Causation, meaning cause and effect, is one of the most important and complex duties a forensic-medicolegal examiner has to establish. As physicians practicing medicine, we have been trained to think etiology of a disease which does not necessarily mean causation. The training in medical school, internship residency and fellowship always addressed etiology synonymously with causation, but we were not taught the practical meaning of the word causation.

The medical scientific community has been struggling with this issue of causation since the early days of Paracelsus. The first criteria for causation were established by Henle and Koch when Henle and his students, including Koch, studied cholera in the 1880’s. These criteria have changed through the years undergoing natural evolution. With new discoveries, Henle and Koch’s criteria were no longer valid for viruses and cancers. In the 1960’s Sir Bradford-Hill, who studied the cancerous effects of cigarettes, nickel and others, presented his aspects to establish medical causation. These criteria have been endorsed to some extent by the scientific community and utilized in occupational medicine and medical toxicology.