Expert Witness Blog

In Checklist of Suspicious Features, Jacqueline A. Joseph, Certified Document Examiner and handwriting expert witness writes:

If you have a suspicious document or handwriting or typewriting, these clues should alert you to the need for a document examiner:

The paper, ink, mode of production or other feature of the document may not have existed at the time the document purports to have been executed or may not have been available in the place where the document originated. An example of that last point would be a computer-generated and printed document from a place where computers were not available until more recently.

In 14 Rules For Working With An Expert Economist, expert witness Dr. Jerome M. Staller offers “rules” to follow that will help your economics expert witness do the best job he or she can for you and your client.

Never ask your expert to go beyond the scope of his or her expertise. I see this more often then I should: economists offering opinions that only a medical or vocational expert is qualified to provide, fore example. Why risk impeachment? In many cases the only way to build a defensible and credible damages argument is by assembling a team of experts — vocational, medical and economic. Your economist can tell you what the limits of economic expertise is in the particular case, and whether he or she will need opinions from other types of experts.

Never make your expert your advocate. Instead, have your expert zealously advocate his or her opinion.

Zoltan Kazatsay from the European Commission’s Directorate for Energy and Transport had this to say regarding “Open Skies”:
“The European Union has one clear political goal, we want to establish an open aviation area between the United States of America and the European Union. But how to reach this specific situation and when to reach it is another issue.” The.U.S. has said it would seek to remove access restrictions on airlines from more than 60 nations. Kazatsay said, however, that the EU would “like to concentrate on the deepening of the existing agreement. We think that a broader multilateral initiative cannot replace the bilateral removal of this type of restrictions.”

Aviation expert witnesses will no doubt be called to testify before Congress regarding “Open Skies” between the United States and European Union.

In Checklist of Suspicious Features, Jacqueline A. Joseph, Certified Document Examiner and handwriting expert witness writes:

If you have a suspicious document or handwriting or typewriting, these clues should alert you to the need for a document examiner:

No one knows the document’s origin or the history of its custody.

Aviation expert witnesses will no doubt be called to testify before Congress regarding “Open Skies” between the United States and European Union.

C. Boyden Gray, the U.S. envoy to the European Commission, said that a lot of work would need to be put into persuading the U.S. Congress not to block the deal amid fears of possible takeovers of U.S. airlines.

“It’s going to take a lot of work to persuade our congress that this is something that should be allowed, I don’t think it’s impossible to do at all but it will take generating public support in the United States and that is do-able but is not easy,” Gray said.

In 14 Rules For Working With An Expert Economist, expert witness Dr. Jerome M. Staller offers “rules” to follow that will help your economics expert witness do the best job he or she can for you and your client.

Use your expert to assemble, review and analyze data. Your expert will help you martial your facts and use them to compose an effective narrative. Use your economist to help guide depositions and discovery — he knows best what you will need to build a credible narrative as far as economic issues.

Develop the theme of the damages case with the expert. A damages argument is the story of differences: what was the plaintiff’s economic status before the incident, and what was the plaintiff’s economic status after the incident? The jury can best understand these differences if they are presented as a narrative. Your economist can help you frame the theme of this narrative and can supply facts and theories enabling the jury to understand and accept the narrative..

In Common Construction Defects, expert witness Pete Fowler describes how substandard construction during Southern California’s 1980s building boom has created a construction defect litigation “industry.” He writes:

Attorneys, acting as advocates for homeowners, hire these experts in the effort to prove that shoddy workmanship is causing new homes to rapidly deteriorate. Meanwhile, the home building industry, put on the defensive, is claiming that the real problem is unscrupulous attorneys who are feeding off the media coverage and exploiting the legal system. The reality is probably somewhere in between. Regardless, residential construction in Southern California has never been so thoroughly scrutinized.

As a construction expert witness, Fowler provides “a guided tour through some of the most common errors and omissions fueling the litigation frenzy in the California building industry.”

In 14 Rules For Working With An Expert Economist, expert witness Dr. Jerome M. Staller offers “rules” to follow that will help your economics expert witness do the best job he or she can for you and your client.

Engage in specific discovery for each damages claim. Claims for economic damages can involve several elements: lost income, lost household services, lost fringe benefits, different elements of survival and wrongful death claims. Your economist requires specific data relevant to each of these elements. Help your economist by discovering facts relevant to each element of damages.

Think through the logic of each separate aspect of the claim. What aspects of the plaintiff’s particular situation may affect the economic damages argument? Is the industry the plaintiff works in affected by any special economic factors that may not be obvious? Was a self-employed plaintiff’s income the result of the disabled plaintiff’s labor, or was it return on investment? Would a preexisting health condition have limited the plaintiff’s ability to earn income, regardless of the injury at issue? Is it reasonable to argue that a disabled construction worker could become a computer specialist?