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Trucking expert witnesses may opine on motor carrier fleet management, interstate motor carrier operations, federal motor carrier safety regulations, and related topics. Recently, the Board of Directors of American Trucking Associations called on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to make changes to its safety-monitoring system Compliance Safety Accountability.

“From the outset, ATA has supported FMCSA’s efforts to improve its enforcement capabilities through CSA,” ATA President and CEO Bill Graves said. “Through CSA’s development and implementation the agency had been responsive to suggestions and made an effort to improve the program as needed. However, recently our members have become concerned that the agency has become increasingly unresponsive, even in the face of data and logic.”

Read more: trucking.org.

Forensic pathology expert witness Larry Blum testified at a Jefferson City, MO, hearing for Ryan Ferguson who was convicted in the 2001 death of Kent Heitholt. Blum is disputing the cause of injuries that was described in the trial and whether Heitholt was killed during a robbery.

EXPERT WITNESS PROFILER, LLC (“EWP”) www.ExpertWitnessProfiler.com, the expert witness research company, announced the official launch of its service to provide comprehensive background profiles on experts and consultants. The Expert Witness Profile report allows attorneys, paralegals, law librarians, legal investigators, insurance carriers, and other legal professionals to properly vet an expert they may retain, or to develop cross examination or exclusionary material for the opponent’s expert.

The Profile report details the expert’s litigation history, disciplinary history, prior expert witness testimony, expert challenges, licensing history, professional and educational background, and much more. The Profile includes information on how to access available depositions, motions, briefs, articles, and other documents referencing that expert. Each report involves a minimum of 20 hours of research by attorneys and professional legal researchers who leverage databases that are not readily available to the public. The primary goal of the Expert Witness Profile is to save legal professionals time and money, and to deliver a deeper, broader and timelier result than if the legal professional attempted to acquire information about an expert on their own.

EWP was founded by Jim Robinson, Esq., and expert witness/legal research executive Myles Levin. Mr. Robinson and Mr. Levin are two of the co-authors of Finding and Researching Experts and Their Testimony, the definitive white paper on researching experts as well as co-authors of the first chapter of the American Bar Association’s recent publication, Litigators on Experts: Strategies for Managing Expert Witnesses from Retention through Trial. Combined, they have over 40 years experience in researching expert witnesses through the companies they founded, JurisPro Expert Witness Directory and the Daubert Tracker, respectively. EWP’s research team is comprised of over 25 legal professionals specially trained to use advanced research tools and techniques to locate difficult to find information about expert witnesses.

Mortgage fraud expert witnesses may opine on residential mortgages, mortgage fraud, and wholesale mortgages, among other topics. The Denver Post writes that in today’s mortgage and loan industry, multiple assignments of the same loan are common and frequently not recorded. Because an assignment of a promissory note and deed of trust is not required to be recorded, a borrower has no way of knowing who holds them.

In Colorado, Citywide Banks tried to foreclose on a number of home buyers after entities affiliated with Lafayette-based Jaguar Group LLC failed to forward funds to the bank, which held the promissory notes on the properties. Similar cases are occurring throughout the state and country, said attorney Alan Sweetbaum. The cases that have garnered attention in Colorado all tie back to Jaguar. A state grand jury in March indicted five Jaguar officials, accusing them of defrauding lenders in a $3.4 million Ponzi scheme.

Read more: denverpost.com.

In The Expert Nurse Witness, Ellen K. Murphy writes:

A nurse who is asked to consult or testify must approach the agreement with the retaining attorney as he or she would any other contract. The nurse expert has absolutely no duty to consult and cannot be subpoenaed to testify unless he or she consents to do so. This is a main point that should be negotiated up front. After the nurse agrees to provide a service, the nurse is legally bound by contract to do so; thus, there must be a clear expectation of services, timelines, and remuneration for time and expenses.

* Does the service consist of reviewing medical records and providing an opinion to the retaining attorney?

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

Locality Rules and Qualifying Medical Experts

As medicine evolved, however, standards of practice slowly became homogenized across all communities, rural and urban. This happened because medical specialty and subspecialty organizations developed, and physicians were held to the same practice standards. Training became uniform, with all programs employing the same curriculum, using similar textbooks, and subjecting all doctors-in-training to the same qualifying exams, initially, and for recertification. Since the locality rule existed to essentially protect the country doc, the general practitioners who were not as well trained and did not have easy access to the latest medical knowledge and training, it did not apply to those medical specialists and subspecialists who claimed to have advanced training and unique skills. Thus, by the mid-1960’s, in most jurisdictions, these physicians were no longer able to invoke the locality rule when they were sued for malpractice. Instead, they were now required to meet a national standard of practice in their particular specialty. This marked the beginning of the end of the locality rule.

SEAK Inc. has developed a very comprehensive expert witness retention agreement. The contract addresses many issues, including:

• Being kept in the dark by retaining counsel • Being purposefully conflicted out of the case • Being stuck in a case with a problematic attorney • Collection of fees • Conflicts of interest • Credibility challenges • Deposition fees reduced via protective order • Document retention • Duties toward successor law firms • Expense reimbursement • Incomplete documentation • Lack of preparation by retaining counsel prior to testimony • Last minute testimony cancellations • Late payment of fees • Less than ethical attorneys • Licensing issues when testifying out of state • Non-payment of fees • Preserving the expert’s reputation • Pushed outside your true area of expertise • Refusal to pay for all time spent on case • Scheduling • Storage costs • Subpoenas • Travel conditions • Undisclosed Daubert challenges • Unreasonable budgets • Unreasonable deadlines • Unreviewed answers to interrogatories
This contract is well worth the $100 amount, and can be purchased by clicking here: Expert Witness Retention Agreement.

In Get the Most From Engineering Experts, Christopher L. Brinkley writes on how thorough preparation of engineering expert witnesses is the key to winning your case. In this excerpt Brinkley discusses challenges you may face regarding their expert witness testimony.

As a threshold matter, engineering experts must satisfy the jurisdiction’s criteria for the admissibility of expert testimony and must support their work accordingly. In the federal courts, Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and the Daubert trilogy of cases provide the prerequisites for admissibility. Under Daubert, expert evidence must be relevant and based on sound reasoning and methods. To determine if an expert’s analysis is reliable, the trial court must consider whether the underlying methodology has been tested, has been subjected to peer review and publication, has an identifiable error rate, has standards controlling the application of the technique, and has been generally accepted in the field.

Excerpted from Trial Magazine, November 2007

The U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit, affirms lower court ruling on expert witness testimony. In Mariposa Farms, LLC. v. Westfailia-Surge, Inc., 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 473, Westfalia unsuccessfullly tried to discredit farm equipment expert witness testimony. The higher court found that Dr. Sybren Reitsma’s and Dr. Corbett’s testimony provided the jury with sufficient evidence to find that Westfalia was negligent and breached its warranties.

Mariposa Farms, Inc. filed suit in July 2003 against Westfalia alleging negligence and breach of warranty resulting from the installation and operation of cow-milking equipment manufactured by Westfalia. Mariposa alleged that the equipment malfunction created unstable vacuum pressure, which eventually caused mastitis to spread throughout its herd.
At trial, Mariposa expert witness Dr. Sybren Reitsma testified that, based on photographs and conversations with Mariposa’s principal manager Larry Skelley, it was his expert opinion that the design and installation of Westfalia’s vacuum system caused the unstable vacuum pressure which led to the mastitis outbreak. Another Mariposa expert witness, Dr. Robert Corbett, opined that the milking machine equipment malfunction caused the mastitis spread because, in his experience, the bacteria could not spread as rapidly as it did without the presence of a milking machine malfunction

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Naples gastroenterologist Dr. Michael Marks is named in a medical malpractice wrongful death suit involving Judith Dill’s death on April 25, 2003. Expert witness Dr. Ciaran P. Kelly testified that Judith Dill’s condition was caused by a post-operative ileus, which acts like a blockage because it prevents passage of intestinal contents. Gastroenterologist expert Dr. Kelly said Marks should never have ordered a bowel preparation, magnesium citrate, because Judith Dill hadn’t eaten in eight days.

Naples Daily News reports that Dr. Marks performed an endoscopy on April 9 and on April 12, the colonoscopy. During the colonoscopy, Dill vomited violently, aspirating her vomit, which went into her lungs, later causing infection and death on April 25, 2003.