Expert Witness Blog

Liability policies expert witnesses may testify regarding insurance loss claims, insurance policy coverage, liability policies, and related topics. In The Insurer’s Duty to Defend: A Quick Analysis, attorney Thomas H. Veitch, partner with the law firm of Langley & Banack, Inc. in San Antonio, writes:

The duty to defend is distinct from and broader than the duty to indemnify.

Even though a duty to defend exists, there may be no duty to indemnify.

In Important Issues of Business Valuations For Attorneys and Their Clients finance expert witness Richard Teichner, CPA, CVA, CDFAJ, writes:

Attorneys often need to help their clients establish values for businesses or business interests. This article discusses some of the issues which need to be addressed before attempting to arrive at business values. Some examples of situations in which business values may need to be established, particularly in connection with the practice of law, are:

♦ Drafting or assistance with implementing buy-sell provisions in agreements between and among shareholders, partners and limited liability company members.

In Optimizing Your Use of Banking and Financial Institution Experts, banking expert witness Michael F. Richards writes:

Three Critical Expert Questions After the expert has had a chance to review the documents and reconstruct what happened there are three distinct questions the retained attorney should ask their expert.

1) The most obvious is, what did you find that was done wrong?

In Are You Waiting Too Long To Hire An Expert?, construction site expert witness William Gulya, Jr., President & CEO, Middlesex Trenching Company, writes:

Provide the expert with enough advance notice that you require his or her services. A well- rationalized, logical opinion and conclusion must take into account a large number of factors. I have worked on many of the cases where, on simply reviewing and reflecting back on the facts and evidence, I realized and discovered additional evidence, which solidified and confirmed my opinions and conclusions.

Finally, there is the all important expert report. A logical, detailed, well-structured and well- written report can promote settlement. On the other hand, a hurried expert analysis is frequently flawed, inconsistent and poorly written, allowing an opposing attorney to have a field day questioning as to inaccuracies and conflicting statements and challenging the credibility of the expert. Allowing the expert sufficient time to make sure his or her thoughts are clear and all the pertinent facts along with opinion, conclusions and supporting evidence are presented in an easy to read and understandable fashion is essential.

Public storage security experts may opine on self-storage managers, public storage vandalism, miniwarehouse break-ins and related topics. In Preventing Crime and Acts of Terrorism in Self-Storage: Using Products and Services Approved for the SAFETY ActJason Benedict, Iveda Solutions writes:

Many storage operators claim their facilities are secure, but their measures often appear meager to trespassers, criminals and vandals looking to commit their next crime. Commonly used tools have their weaknesses: gate codes can be observed or distributed, alarms can experience false positives, video cameras are rarely monitored around the clock, and even well-lit perimeters and fences have their fallacies, such as missing links and broken light bulbs….

Third-Party Video Surveillance

Lawsuit funding expert witnesses may opine on litigation finance, litigation financial options and attorneys fees, among other topics. Here, attorney Julian Strauss answers the question: What is lawsuit funding?

If you are like most people, you probably did not know lawsuit funding existed until you found yourself in a situation where you needed it. So what is lawsuit funding? It is a cash advance against the expected settlement of a lawsuit. In other words, it is an advance on the settlement of a case that has NOT yet settled. This not to be confused with the purchase of future payments from a case that has already settled. These future payments are known as a “structured settlement”. Lawsuit funding are advances on cases that have yet to settle. These advances are sometimes also called a “lawsuit loan” or “pre-settlement lawsuit funding”.

Read more: chflawsuitfunding.com.

Litigation finance expert witnesses may opine on litigation financial options and attorneys fees, among other topics. Litigation funding is a practice in which individuals who are plaintiffs in lawsuits receive money from firms and individuals who take a lien on the proceeds of a personal injury suit in return for ready cash.

In A Fee Limitation Rule for Litigation Finance, Michael B. Abramowicz of The George Washington University School of Law writes:

It should be possible…to improve the incentives of litigation finance companies by enacting rules that will affect their financial return. Indeed, those who are critical of litigation finance on the ground that it can spur frivolous litigation should recognize that in fact, litigation finance presents an opportunity. Because litigation finance companies will necessarily perform some screening on the quality of lawsuits they fund, we can devise rules that will tend to improve the incentives of companies to support lawsuits they truly believe are meritorious while rejecting nonmeritorious ones. There exist a variety of existing mechanisms operating directly on litigants that seek to achieve similar effects. These mechanisms include sanctions for frivolous suits7 and fee-shifting rules.8 It is not straightforward to design such mechanisms to produce optimal incentives even for liquid, risk-neutral plaintiffs,9 however, and it may be particularly difficult for such mechanisms to optimize the incentives of plaintiffs who might not have the funds to pay sanctions or for opponents’ legal expenses. A requirement that plaintiffs put up a bond may arbitrarily screen out good cases if the plaintiffs have no access to litigation finance. It may be easier to design mechanisms that affect the returns of the lenders, so that their screening will be closely aligned with the social interest. This Essay’s project is to describe such a mechanism, along with a number of variations, and to identify its advantages relative to alternatives.

Liability policies expert witnesses may testify regarding insurance loss claims, insurance policy coverage, liability policies, and related topics. In The Insurer’s Duty to Defend: A Quick Analysis, attorney Thomas H. Veitch, partner with the law firm of Langley & Banack, Inc. in San Antonio, writes:

The duty to defend analysis focuses on the factual allegations in the pleadings rather than on the legal theories alleged in the pleadings. For example, a mere recitation that the insured was negligent is not determinative of negligence. The focus must be on facts supporting such a contention.

Summary The foregoing are factors commonly relied upon and applied by the courts in a duty to defend analysis. Accordingly, consultants or claims people will want to consider these factors when determination of a duty to defend is at issue.