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Bill Muzzy’s testimony is crucial in the civil trial against TRW Vehicle Safety Systems, the company that manufactures seatbelts for General Motors. The seat belt and air bags expert witness was cross examined for five hours in the 146th District Court in Killeen Texas. Muzzy maintains that a design flaw in a seatbelt led to the death of Jenny Singley. kdhnews.com also reports that the expert witness’s credentials include his role as investigator of the restraint system in the fatal Dale Earnhardt crash and 5,500 experiments on human volunteers for the Navy and Air Force during the Cold War, which involved testing human tolerance to acceleration. “We have all the evidence in total to show the seatbelt didn’t operate correctly,” Muzzy said. “This is the most likely scenario.”

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Jonathan Evans and his co-counsel, Michael Edmiston, won in back-to-back arbitration hearings before Los Angeles based Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panels. In both cases, the conduct of the brokers and their firms was so shocking that both arbitration panels awarded attorney’s fees and securities expert witness fees along with sizable compensatory damages. Street Insider.com also reports that in the second hearing:

Evans represented a single-mother of two whose broker, Shapour Javadizadeh, of RJJ Pasadena Securities caused massive trading losses in her account with a high-risk option trading strategy. His client inherited the account from her father in 2002 and was using the money to pay her living expenses while rebuilding her life. In a hard-fought week of hearings, which saw numerous “attorney-only” conferences with the Arbitration Panel, including one which resulted in sanctions against the Respondents for their shenanigans in withholding documents, Evans prevailed for his client. The Panel awarded $151,000 in compensatory damages, attorney’s fees, expert witness fees, and sanctions.

“During my cross-examination of the broker, I was amazed when he literally stood up before the Panel and admitted he did everything complained about in the Claim. It was a moment out of a courtroom drama, and his admission won the case for us,” said Evans, reflecting back on the hearing. The FINRA case number is 06-04288 and the award may be found at http://www.finra.org.

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Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty were both charged with perjury after they lied under oath about a possible affair between them from 2001 to 2003. M.L. Elrick and David Ashenfelter of FreePress.com write:

The false testimony potentially exposes them to felony perjury charges, legal experts say. Kilpatrick, a lawyer, could also face discipline if the state Attorney Discipline Board finds he lied in court. The Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct, which govern attorneys, say even nonpracticing lawyers in public office can be sanctioned for dishonesty. “Lawyers holding public office assume legal responsibilities going beyond those of other citizens,” the code states.

Lying under oath is one of the worst sins a lawyer can commit — akin to stealing a client’s money, legal ethics expert witnesses said…”It’s literally the equivalent of the death penalty for a law license,” said Michael Schwartz, former administrator of the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission, which investigates lawyers.

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Jonathan Evans and his co-counsel, Michael Edmiston, won in back-to-back arbitration hearings before Los Angeles based Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panels. In both cases, the conduct of the brokers and their firms was so shocking that both arbitration panels awarded attorney’s fees and securities expert witness fees along with sizable compensatory damages. Street Insider.com also reports that in the first hearing:

…Evans represented a senior citizen and his wife against A.G. Edwards and its broker, Anthony Russo. Mr. Russo, a broker who had a prior history of discipline including both a termination from a firm and a regulatory suspension for recommending unsuitable securities, positioned much of his client’s retirement funds in high-risk equities just months before the technology bubble imploded. Despite calls from his clients, Mr. Russo did absolutely nothing to mitigate the devastating losses; rather he simply abandoned his clients to one of the worst bear markets in history…

On behalf of his clients, Evans recovered $84,000 in compensatory damages, $33,600 in attorney’s fees, and $13,000 expert witness fees. Anthony Russo, despite his checkered history, and now this arbitration award, is the branch manager of the A.G. Edwards office in Oxnard, California. The FINRA case number is 05-05647 and the award may be found at http://www.finra.org.

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Louise Reynolds of Kingston, Onatario was charged in June, 1997, with the stabbing death of her seven-year-old daughter and held in jail for almost two years. The charges were dropped when lawyers and expert witnesses became convinced that the child had been mauled by a pit bull. A U.S. pathology expert witness also backed the dog-bite theory.

Reynold’s case is in the news again due to an inquiry into the pediatric forensic pathology system in Ontario. According to a confidential document released yesterday, the lead detective urged prosecutors to push hard for Reynold’s conviction. Kingston police fought in court last year to keep the document out of the public eye. Tom Blackwell of The National Post also writes:

Even when the charge was withdrawn in the face of contradictory evidence from other experts, Kingston police continued to back the pathologist’s original viewpoint. International experts who reviewed Dr. Smith’s child-death investigations much later also said that he had wrongly diagnosed stab wounds, and concluded a pit bull had killed Sharon. The same experts found that the head of Ontario’s pediatric forensic pathology unit had made serious errors in 20 of 45 suspicious child deaths he investigated between 1991 and 2001.

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Sam Sommers, a Tufts University assistant professor of psychology, testified last week as an expert witness on whether juror racism tainted Christopher McCowen’s first-degree murder conviction in 2006. A predominantly white jury found McCowen, who is black, guilty of the 2002 murder of Christa Worthington. Also convicted of aggravated rape and aggravated burglary, McCowan was sentenced to state prison for life without parole. The psychology expert witness testified on how racial stereotypes can affect jury deliberations. Mary Ann Bragg of Cape Cod Times also reports:

…Sommers acknowledged most individuals are not “at the mercy of these stereotypes” and they have the capacity – if reminded about the seriousness of the decision – to put their stereotypes aside enough to serve as impartial jurors…In Nickerson’s questioning of 12 jurors last week, the judge focused primarily on three alleged incidents of potential juror misconduct: whether juror Marlo George, who is white, used the term “black man” in a racist manner; whether juror Carol Cahill, who is also white, told fellow jurors she feared McCowen because he was a black man staring at her; and whether juror Eric Gomes, a Cape Verdean, told fellow jurors that blacks had a tendency toward violence.

…Sommers testified that choices of adjectives to describe a defendant such as “black” show what information a speaker thinks is relevant. Use of the adjective “black” would be warranted if the speaker needed to distinguish between two men, one black and one white, Sommers said. Otherwise, “it’s an indication of the belief that race is relevant,” the Tufts professor testified.

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In How Attorneys Can Best Utilize Their Medical Expert Witness: A Medical Expert’s Perspective, Dr. Vernon M. Neppe MD, PhD, FRSSAf, FAPA, writes that expert witness testimony depends on finding an appropriate match for your case. This excerpt deals with document preparation.

There are costs that are necessary:

Rather obvious is the review of the appropriate medical records. All records that are relevant to the expert’s testimony should be supplied. Sometimes, with key witnesses, this may mean all documents pertinent to the case. Whereas this may not be entirely ideal, pragmatism plays a role. The attorney should be careful whom (s)he chooses for that task, as doing this for five or six experts could easily make costs overwhelming. Generally, in each case, there may be one or two key witnesses. The others may be declared in a limited way and receive all relevant documents for the specific area of expertise only. They should carefully obtain only what is relevant information for the specific declaration. The easiest cost saver is a well constructed file of pertinent pages with indexes as well as a brief summary letter containing only facts, e.g. date of alleged incident, demographics, alleged claims and questions to be answered.

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Anne Sutherland, a professor of anthropology at UC Riverside, testified as an expert witness Friday during the penalty phase of Tony Ricky Yonko’s murder trial. Yonko, 45, a Gypsy, was convicted last month of murder for the October 2002 beating death of Paul Ngo, 41, inside his Lake Elsinore home during a burglary. The behavioral science expert witness stated that a Gypsy being convicted of murder is uncommon because of the American Gypsy culture’s distain for violence. Sutherland testified that in her extensive study of American Gypsies she had not come across a murder case involving a Gypsy defendant before this one. Tammy McCoy of PE.com also writes:

Sutherland was hired by Yonko’s defense team and testified about the Gypsy culture and the role it played in Yonko’s life. “They don’t commit acts of violence. They consider that really prohibited,” Sutherland said of her experience studying American Gypsies.

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Sam Sommers, a Tufts University assistant professor of psychology, testified yesterday as an expert witness on whether juror racism tainted Christopher McCowen’s first-degree murder conviction in 2006. A predominantly white jury found McCowen, who is black, guilty of the 2002 murder of Christa Worthington. Also convicted of aggravated rape and aggravated burglary, McCowan was sentenced to state prison for life without parole. The psychology expert witness testified on how racial stereotypes can affect jury deliberations. Mary Ann Bragg of Cape Cod Times also reports:

“Stereotypes are very pervasive in our society at large,” Sommers said on the witness stand in the small, over-heated courtroom. One common stereotype is the association of black men with violent tendencies, Sommers said. And even for jurors who believe they’re fair-minded, that type of stereotype can be triggered when a trial is “racially charged” by factors including media publicity and remarks in testimony, he said.

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The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, owner of the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Hartford CT, has challenged the November vote by dealers to unionize. During the NLRB hearing, the tribe questioned why the ballots were printed only in English and why an election notice was only printed in one Chinese dialect. Both the tribe and the UAW called their own language and linguistics expert witnesses to testify. Heather Allen of The Day.com also reports that the UAW’s expert witness, Guanhua Wang, an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut said:

…the difference in the two languages really comes down to 2,000 to 3,000 written characters. Professor Wang said in traditional Chinese, there are probably 50,000 to 60,000 written characters and only a couple of thousand look differently. In a perfect world, the educator said, both the simplified and traditional translations would be included, but he said it is not always the case…

Richard Hankins, one of the three attorneys representing the tribe, noted that in the last five years, the NLRB regional office has held 24 union elections, and in only one – the Foxwoods election – were the ballots not printed in other languages. He added that more than a quarter of the eligible voters in the election – about 700 dealers – identify themselves as Asian or Pacific Islander, proving that “a significant percentage of those voters need written communication in Chinese.”