Expert Witness Blog

After two days of testimony, a Duluth, Minnesota, jury found that Jammie Thomas was liable for infringing Capitol Records copyrights on all 24 of the 24 recordings at issue. The jury awarded $222,000 in statutory damages after finding that the infringement was “willful.” RIAA’s expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson, examined date stamps on Thomas’s hard drive. The computer security expert witness is with the security business Palisade Systems. Eric Bangeman, writing for Ars Technica also writes:

The first case has gone to trial, and the verdict is in. The music labels now have a notch on their belt, while a woman who spent thousands of dollars on their product is now faced with a large judgment.

The RIAA hopes that this and the 20,000 other cases serve as a deterrent to would-be file-sharers, but the question of whether or not the music industry is engendering so much hostility and bad press with its campaign that it outweighs any short-term benefits remains. With a verdict in their favor, the RIAA hopes to ratchet the campaign of fear up a notch and says it will press forward with its legal campaign.

Animal expert witness Greg Kaufman, President of the Pacific Whale Foundation, testified this week in a court hearing on on behalf of three environmental groups. The groups are seeking an injunction against the Superferry to stop operations during an environmental study. The StarBulletin writes:

As an expert witness, Kaufman has responded to questions on whale population, breeding grounds, seasonal activity, vessel speed restrictions, vessel routes and research on whale-vessel collisions.

During cross-examination yesterday, Superferry attorney Bruce Lamon questioned Kaufman about a Feb. 10, 1998, incident near Kihei in which an agent with the Pacific Whale Foundation was accused of violating the Endangered Species Act of 1973. The alleged violations included failure to allow an inspection of research activity records by the National Marine Fisheries Service, Lamon said. He said a $5,000 fine was issued, along with a warning for alleged violations.

Motor vehicle crash injury expert witness Michael Freeman testified Tuesday that assumptions in an Allstate claims handling manual about how much force passengers endure in low-speed wrecks have no scientific basis. “These numbers are impossible, and they are just made up,” said Freeman, an epidemiologist at Oregon Health and Science University testifying in the second day of a $1.425 billion civil trial in Fayette Circuit Court challenging Allstate Insurance Co.’s claims handling practices. Kentucky.com also reports:

The document estimated the G-force placed on passengers and the speed of a crash based on the type of property damage to certain vehicle models. Freeman said the figures are significantly underestimated and scientifically impossible. ‘This is obviously a bogus document,’ Freeman said.

Freeman testified as an expert witness for Geneva Hager of Richmond, who claims that Allstate purposefully dragged out her injury claim in a 1997 wreck. Her lawyers argue that Allstate’s claims handling practices, implemented in 1995, violate Kentucky’s Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act. They are specifically attacking how Allstate assesses minor-impact soft-tissue injury cases, or MIST claims.

In Higher Benchmark For Class Actions Ameet Sachdev of the Chicago Tribune writes:

Demanding more evidence of wrongdoing and scrutinizing expert witnesses may, some say, bar many consumers from access to courts. Judges are raising the bar on class-action lawsuits, demanding more evidence of the alleged wrongdoing and even holding mini-trials of expert witnesses before deciding whether to enable many plaintiffs to sue as one.

The expanded scrutiny is designed to weed out frivolous suits that have drawn the scorn of businesses and inspired federal legislation imposing limits on class actions. But critics say it also threatens to deprive consumers of a legal recourse that has been used through the years to reshape the nation’s economic and social landscape.

LaVon Chisley, 23, a former Penn State football player from Maryland, was convicted Friday of murder in the stabbing death of former roommate Langston Carraway. Chisley was found guilty of first- and third-degree murder based on DNA evidence and expert witness testimony. The footprint expert witness testified that a pattern left by a shoe on the victim’s linoleum floor matched the wear pattern on shoes owned by the defendant.

At one time Chisley had a promising football career, but he was kicked off the Penn State team because of poor grades and at the time of the murder he was $50,000 in debt. He may have been after the cash that Carraway, kept in his apartment.

BaltimoreSun.com goes on to write:

Friday’s arguments in the class-action lawsuit against DuPont and New York-based T.L. Diamond & Co. mark the end of the first phase of what could be a four-part trial. Both sides attempted to discredit each other’s expert witnesses in the lawsuit which alleges that DuPont and Diamond dumped arsenic, cadmium and lead on the site of a former plant. The plaintiffs are seeking long-term medical monitoring, property damages, and punitive damages paid to thousands of people in and around Spelter, W. Va. Environmental expert witnesses testified on testing methods, comparison standards, and dangers to humans. According to BusinessWeek.com:

An attorney for some of the residents said the former zinc-smelting plant left “a big cancerous tumor” in a small West Virginia community, and DuPont should be required not only to clean up the mess but also to monitor the health of the people living around it.

Defense attorneys, however, say there is no evidence to support that claim, and DuPont capped the site so it might someday be redeveloped. “It cannot be denied that DuPont did good things here,” insisted defense attorney Jeffrey A. Hall.