Expert Witness Blog

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. The Day.com reports that the tribe’s expert witness, Alex Want argued that:

..many immigrants – including dealers at the casino – cannot read traditional written Chinese, but only “simplified written Chinese.” Tribal attorneys tried to establish that “traditionally written Chinese” is generally understood by highly educated members of the population, while UAW lawyers countered that it is now more common for people to have the ability to read both.

Wang, who operates a language translation service with is wife in Minnesota, said the spoken word in the two variations of Chinese is exactly the same, but the written characters are different, and that’s what poses a problem in the posting of the election notice.

New York Plainview Water District and its hydrology and ground water expert witnesses did not convince a state judge that oil companies should pay for clean up as a result of gas stations spills. Newsday.com also writes:

The lawsuit had drawn interest because it could have required ExxonMobil, Shell Oil and Cumberland Farms to pay for future pollution, even though contamination from leaking underground storage tanks had yet to reach the district’s wells. But Justice Kenneth A. Davis dismissed the case Wednesday in State Supreme Court, ruling that the district had failed to prove the spills, which contained the potentially carcinogenic fuel additive MTBE, posed a “real and imminent” threat to the wells. Davis’ decision followed weeks of exhaustive testimony during the summer from expert witnesses on local hydrology and various computer models used to predict whether the contamination was likely to hit Plainview’s wells. The judge agreed with the defendants’ argument that MTBE did not threaten the wells, a conclusion shared by the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

Expert witness James P. Graham testified for the defense in Maria Parra Helenius’ lawsuit against the Dodgers and her assailant. Helenius says she was left legally blind from a punch in the right eye by Denis Ordaz and that Ordaz should have been ejected earlier by the Dodgers security team. The security expert witness supervised various bicentennial events in 1776 and opined that “Miss Helenius violated the No. 1 personal safety rule: A person should always flee from an aggressive person and not confront them unless trapped.” KNBC.com also reports:

When Helenius complained to two uniformed Los Angeles police officers supplementing the Dodger security team that day about Ordaz’s unruly behavior, they did the right thing by relocating Ordaz’s group instead of detaining or ejecting her, Graham said.

“It is my opinion that the L.A. Dodgers took reasonable, professional, thorough and effective security precautions,” Graham said. “They had no right to detain (Ordaz) because she had not committed a crime.”

Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court will hear an appeal of a massive class-action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart Stores Inc. deprived hourly employees of their earned wages and rest and meal breaks. Wal-Mart employees’ attorney, Robert Bonsignore, has 35 cases pending against Wal-Mart in other states. Wal-Mart employees have already won a $167 million judgment in California and a $151 million judgment in Pennsylvania. The class action expert witness for the employees says that Wal-Mart employees were deprived of compensation for over 10 million missed rest breaks and over 21,000 incidents of one-minute clock-outs. Donna Goodison of
Boston Herald.com also writes:

But a Wal-Mart spokesperson said a “great majority” of courts have ruled that wage-and-hour cases aren’t suited for class-action status because “every individual’s circumstances are unique. It is our policy to pay every associate for every hour worked, and any manager who violates that policy is subject to discipline, up to and including termination,” the spokesperson said. “The company has very clear policies on meal and rest breaks.”

Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court will hear an appeal of a massive class-action lawsuit that alleges Wal-Mart Stores Inc. deprived hourly employees of their earned wages and rest and meal breaks. Wal-Mart employees’ attorney, Robert Bonsignore, has 35 cases pending against Wal-Mart in other states. Wal-Mart employees have already won a $167 million judgment in California and a $151 million judgment in Pennsylvania. Donna Goodison of

Boston Herald.com also writes:

Using Wal-Mart’s paper and electronic payroll records, Bonsignore’s class action expert witness found that the Wal-Mart employees allegedly were deprived of wages for 10.1 million missed rest breaks from 1995 to 2005. The expert witness also found 21,383 alleged incidents of one-minute clock-outs where employees went uncompensated and that Wal-Mart allegedly realized $423,010 in free labor from employees whose work was not recorded by the system.

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 the reliability of the expert witness’s work.

You also must prepare engineering experts to address the jurisdiction’s substantive law with respect to the existence of a defect. These standards vary widely from state to state. For example, in West Virginia, a product is defective if it is not reasonably safe for its intended use, giving the general state of the art at the time the product was made. But in Georgia, a defect is evaluted by balancing the risk inherent in the product against its utility, taking into consideration a wide range of factors.

More to follow…Excerpted from Trial Magazine, November 2007

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 the reliability of the expert witness’s work.

One other aspect of the reliability analysis that frequently arises relates to the concept of engineering judgment. Engineers routinely draw conclusions from their understanding to general principles of engineering and prior experience in similar circumstances. For example, extrapolation through engineering judgment is employed by manufacturers to reduce the inefficiency and economic burdens associated with testing every conceivable permutation of a design. Where the basis for an expert’s application of engineering judgment has been well articulated, it is considered an acceptable methodology.

More to follow…Excerpted from Trial Magazine, November 2007

One of the four handwriting expert witnesses used to examine the authenticity of documents relating to President Bush’s service with the Air National Guard has surfaced in the Javier Cortez weapons trial. U.S. attorneys filed a motion in the Eastern District of Texas to compel Cortez to provide prosecutors with “acceptable handwriting samples.” Cortez’s attorney, Don Bailey of Sherman, said there were “known problems” with Linda James, the document examination expert witness who tested the signature on the ATF form that Cortez allegedly forged to buy a weapon used in the Truett Street murders in McKinney. Danny Gallagher of the McKinney Courier Gazette also reports:

Cortez faces four federal charges which include two counts of possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance and one count of making a false statement to a licensed firearms dealer for allegedly forging his brother Raul Cortez’s name on an ATF form.

The Cortez brothers and Eddie Williams were arrested in July 2007 in connection with the March 12, 2004, murders of Rosa Barbosa, Mark Barbosa, Austin York and Matthew Self at Rosa Barbosa’s home on Truett Street.