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LawGuru.com poses the question “What constitutes an”expert witness”? Attorney Jonathon Moseley answers:

This is an interesting question, and this is one of the biggest reasons why “pro se” plaintiffs (without an attorney ) often lose in court. A “fact witness” is someone who simply testifies to what they saw, or heard, or know. “The light was red, when the car went flying through.” That is simply a fact. ANYTHING which requires some opinion or analysis or conclusion, however, requires an “expert witness.” For example, “If the brakes were in good condition, the driver should have been able to stop in time and avoid the accident.” Says who? That is not a fact that can be observed and testified about. That is an opinion (says the law). Actually it is an engineering and scientific conclusion based upon the laws of physics and the characteristics of cars. However, it takes an “expert” to testify to that, or you cannot introduce any such evidence into the trial.

Or: “It will cost $5000 to repaint the house because the contractor botched the job.” Says who? The court will not allow such testimony, to establish the cost of repainting, unless you have an “expert witness” to express his educated OPINION as to how much money it will cost to repaint (how much time, how big the house is, whether painting certain areas are easy or hard, etc.)

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In The Michigan Law Blog, Michael J. Hamblin writes:

Required Qualifications for Expert Witnesses in Michigan Business Litigation Cases

In many business litigation cases, winning depends on the testimony of an expert witness who supports a party’s theory of the case or damage calculations. When testifying, the expert gives his or her opinion on one or more topics at issue in the case.

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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.

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A federal prosecutor dropped key toxicology expert witness Christopher Weis from the case against W.R. Grace & Co. saying the move would significantly curtail the government’s case after U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy had told the parties to “move the case along.”

Weis, a toxicologist for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency arrived on Libby’s front lines in 1999 to investigate reports of widespread asbestos contamination. He and other emergency response workers were the impetus behind government efforts to clean up Libby and investigate Grace’s alleged criminal conduct. Grace, a global chemical and building materials company, and five former company executives are charged with a federal conspiracy involving Clean Air Act violations and obstruction of justice.

Excerpted from Missoulian.com.

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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.

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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.

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The topic for the April 20th meeting of the Forensic Expert Witness Association (FEWA) is “The NAS Report on Forensic Science and Legal Challenges to Scientific Testimony.” The presenter is attorney and UCI Professor William C. Thompson, PhD.

In February, the National Academies of Science issued their 254 page report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, that is quite critical of the state of forensic science in the United States. Professor Thompson is quoted in this report several times and will speak on how attorneys challenge science and the impact of this report for experts and the legal system.

William C. Thompson is Professor and Chair of the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California, Irvine. He has a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He studies the way people interpret (and sometimes misinterpret) scientific and statistical data and has also written extensively about the use and misuse of DNA evidence.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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