Expert Witness Blog

In March the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a 2005 law establishing minimum qualifications for medical liability expert witnesses who testify in. The court rejected arguments from the state trial bar that it was up to the courts — not lawmakers — to set rules governing expert witness testimony and that the statute violated the separation of powers between the legislature and the judiciary. The opinion states:

Although we maintain plenary power over procedural rules, we do not believe that power precludes the legislature from addressing what it believes to be a serious substantive problem — the effects on public health of increased medical malpractice insurance rates and the reluctance of qualified physicians to practice here — by effectively increasing the plaintiff’s burden of production in medical malpractice actions.

Amednews.com reports: “Because Arizona’s constitution prohibits any type of cap on damages in liability cases, “this is a very important decision for us,” said Chic Older, Arizona Medical Assn. executive vice president.

Marketing expert witness Glen Balzer is a widely published author on distributor and representative relationships and agreements, as well as sales organizations and commissions. Here he writes on traits of successful representative agreements.

Suppliers and manufacturers’ representatives often seek to gain advantage over their partners by incorporating a bias into the representative agreement favoring the author, placing the other party at a disadvantage. This technique rarely enjoys the benefits intended. The best agreements set balance as an objective between supplier and representative. If the relationship begins with a biased agreement, that bias works against development of a solid relationship. Since the agreement is the foundation of the partnership, it must flourish with words and phrases that elicit a spirit of trust and cooperation.

Each clause of a representative agreement should seek to strike a balance between the power of the supplier and the manufacturers’ representative. If there is a clause of indemnification protecting the supplier for a specific set of conditions, there should also be a clause protecting the representative on a different set of conditions. If there is a paragraph outlining the duties and obligations of the representative, there should also be a paragraph outlining the duties and obligations of the supplier. A unilateral phrase only works to the ultimate distrust of one party by the other. Distrust always works against development of the relationship and ultimately against sales, growth, and profits, the original purpose of the relationship and the agreement.

In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

Conclusion

A crime analysis case study was recently completed by the author’s firm and is pending publication in the American Society for Industrial Security’s (A.S.I.S.) Security Business Practices Reference, Volume 6. The results of the case study indicated that a sizable return on investment was realized within a year of implementing a crime analysis program. The first year’s savings, or cost avoidance, was $9.2 million, or 41% of the security budget. This savings reflected a number of changes to the security program, but primarily constitutes the deployment of security personnel during higher risk times. There is another category of cost avoidance that cannot yet be measured. That category is generated by reducing crime and avoiding security litigation.

In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

Temporal analysis is the third query. This analysis tells us when the risks are high and helps us efficiently allocate our security resources when threats are more likely. Various methods for learning a property’s crime patterns can be considered including time of day, days of week, week of month, seasonal trends, and, on the extreme, crime trends during full moons. Temporal analysis is where security managers will gain the highest return on investment.

You will find that crime analysis does not stop with these analyses and applications of security measures, but takes further steps to monitor the crime situation. Crime analysis continually monitors the crime picture, typically on an annual basis so we can test the program’s effectiveness and revise if necessary. Crime analysis makes a static security program dynamic, providing for change.

The parent company of one of the most popular poker sites on the Internet said yesterday it has agreed to pay the U.S. government $105 million to settle charges that it illegally offered gambling to players in the U.S. PartyGaming Plc said it would pay the money over three years as part of a “Non-Prosecution Agreement” it recently reached with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

The Justice position is considered controversial with gaming analysts and some members of Congress arguing it has steered U.S. players to unregulated offshore sites. “The U.S. government has now succeeded in driving out the reputable publicly-traded Internet gaming operators,” said Joseph M. Kelley, a professor of business law at the State College at Buffalo, who has also served as an expert witness for gaming and government interests. “It has not decreased online gambling, but has reduced the ability to monitor suspicious transactions.”

Excerpted from The Washington Post.

In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

Analyzing the Information

Once we have our database of actual crimes, we can analyze the specific risk at each site. There are a number of queries that will assist in creating an effective security program. The first is a property-specific analysis which helps us differentiate between crime risks when comparing sites. For resource allocation, it is imperative that the analysis is focused at the property level. Given a security budget of $1,000,000 per year, this analysis allows us to compare risks at each site and allocate accordingly.

U.S. District Court Judge James Mahan recently postponed the criminal trial of officials who run the Truckee Carson Irrigation District until February 2010 at the request of defense lawyers who said they need more time to prepare for such an “unusual and complex case.” The officials are accused of defrauding the federal government for years so they could deliver more water from Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River to area ranchers and farmers than was rightfully theirs.

A 2008 flood triggered dozens of lawsuits from more than 100 homeowners and questions about the amount of water flowing through 370 miles of canals. Hydrology expert witnesses estimate it would cost $3.1 million to build an 11.7-mile long concrete barrier on the Truckee irrigation canal to protect against a breach such as the one in 2008. Environmentalists and others question whether taxpayers should subsidize a century-old irrigation system that uses precious water resources to grow crops in the desert.

Excerpted from SierraSun.com.

In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:

As an industry best practice, the objectives of crime analysis are:

1. To reduce crime on the property.