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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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On January 30, 2007, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that plaintiffs’ epidemiology expert witness Dr. Richard Allen Lemen presented scientifically reliable, and therefore legally admissible, evidence drawing a causal connection between mesothelioma and inhalation of brake-lining dust. Chapin v. A&L Parts, et al., 2007 Mich. App. LEXIS 156. The disagreement between defendants’ occupational health expert witness Dr. Michael Goodman was on the causal connection. The court ruled:

The fact that two scientists value the available research differently and ascribe different significance to that research does not necessarily make either of their conclusions unreliable. Indeed, science is, at its heart, itself an ongoing search for truth, with new discoveries occurring daily, and with regular disagreements between even the most respected members of any given field. A Daubert-type hearing of this kind is not a judicial search for truth. The courts are unlikely to be capable of achieving a degree of scientific knowledge that scientists cannot….The inquiry is not into whether an expert’s opinion is necessarily correct or universally accepted. The inquiry is into whether the opinion is rationally derived from a sound foundation.

In the dissent, Judge O’Connell found that plaintiff’s expert witness and defendants’ expert testified that no less than 15 epidemiological studies have been conducted to determine if there is an empirically verifiable correlation between brake grinding and mesothelioma, none of these studies established a causal connection Therefore, under Daubert, Dr. Lemen’s testimony should be inadmissible.

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Marie Lindor has retained a well known expert witness in her Brooklyn federal court case, UMG v. Lindor. RIAA alleges copyright infringement due to shared files on Lindor’s home computer. Professor Johan Pouwelse, P2P technology expert, will testify regarding file sharing networks.

Prof. Johan Pouwelse, Chairman of the Parallel and Distributed Systems Group of Delft University of Technology, testified against RIAA’s MediaSentry ‘investigations’ (PDF) in a case in the Netherlands. His expert witness testimony resulted in the court directing ISPs in the Netherlands not to turn over their subscribers’ information. Lindor hopes to discredit RIAA’s software expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, writes the New York Country Lawyer.

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The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee heard expert witness testimony in an attempt to find causes behind record-high gasoline prices. Oil and gas expert witnesses described years of a lack of investment in refinery capacity as a primary factor in rising prices.

Deutsche Bank’s Paul Sankey, oil and gas production expert witness, said years of oil companies losing money led to many companies neglecting refinery investment. A contributing factor was the Texas City explosion, which caused other refiners to operate more cautiously and with less capacity. As the Associated Press reports, last year also saw the temporary shutdown of production at Prudhoe Bay due to maintenance problems.

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A Des Moines mother alleges that her young daughter was being sexually abused by the child’s father. Pictures led the mother’s expert witness to conclude with 99.9 percent certainty that there had been abuse.

As reported in the DesMoines Register, the mother called the child-abuse hot line and began taking the child for weekly therapy sessions. The state’s child-abuse specialist examined the child and found no signs of sexual abuse, though child sexual abuse experts say lascivious acts don’t necessarily leave physical evidence.

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Expert witnesses will be questioned by a three-member arbitration panel in the Floyd Landis hearing to determine if the cyclist used banned synthetic testosterone during the Tour de France. Performance Enhancing Drug Experts will answer questions from arbitrators and the opposing party. Cycling Experts are also expected to testfiy.

Landis could be banned for two years from cycling competitions and stripped of his title, something that’s never happened in the Tour’s 104-year history. CBS2.com expects that Landis’ lawyers to argue that major mistakes were made in the tests that came up positive for synthetic testosterone.

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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.

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Peter Braunstein admits to his attack on a a former colleague at Fairchild Publications in October of 2005 but has pleaded not guilty, blaming his actions on undiagnosed schizophrenia. Dr. Monte Buchsbaum, expert witness and professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, said that images of the activity in Braunstein’s brain were consistent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

As reported at CourtTVnew.com, the alleged deficiency is crucial to the success of Braunstein’s defense strategy, which requires that a jury find he was incapable of conscious decision-making the day of the attack. Braunstein’s lawyers are expected to call another schizophrenia expert witness to corroborate Buchsbaum’s claim by making a clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia.

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Vermont is the first state to go to trial over California’s greenhouse gas limits. The 16-day trial ended after expert witnesses gave testimony regarding fuel economy and greenhouse gas emmissions. The state’s automobile expert witness, K.G. Duleep, testified that car companies already have the technology to improve fuel economy sufficient to meet the 2016 standards.

Conversely, the automakers’ fuel economy expert witness gave testimony that fuel economy could not be improved sufficiently by 2016 to meet California’s greenhouse gas emissions limits. According to The Burlington Free Press, the judge allowed the two sides 30 days to file post-trial briefs with no indication on when he will issue a decision.

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Despite it being a departmental requirement, Jackson Police Department records show that almost one in six officers did not receive a qualifying score at the department’s firing range last year. Eighty of the 488 Jackson officers received no qualifying score because they didn’t take the test.

Charles Key, a veteran of the Baltimore Police Department and an expert witness on police training, was shocked at how many Jackson police officers were not graded on their firearms proficiency. Mr. Key told The Clarion Ledger, “That’s absurd. That’s insane. You don’t even know whether they can put holes in paper,” he said. “That’s so far below modern police standards that you must not even have state standards.” Key also testifies as an expert witness in use-of-force lawsuits, and warns that not having an adequate training program endangers the public and leaves police departments open for costly lawsuits.

The Jackson Police Department has been sued in the past over training issues such as high-speed pursuit training and civil rights issues. Departments across the nation have had their training regimens picked apart in lawsuits over the use of deadly force.