Expert witness industry insights from attorneys, judges & experts themselves

Finding expert witnesses in well-settled areas of science or industry oftentimes necessitates searching across non-conventional resources. Within the context of a rotogravure engraving lawsuit, Cahn Litigation Services provides an overview of these challenges and relates how their custom expert witness search approach provides law firm clients with access to resources beyond the expert witness database.

Attorneys interviewing expert witness candidates often miss opportunities to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the expert witness candidate and the case itself. Drawing from thousands of such expert witness interviews, Cahn Litigation provides best practices to help attorneys optimize their interview process.

An Eastern District of Texas order gives guidance to counsel utilizing COVID-related concerns as basis for scheduling order delay. Existing preparations by expert witnesses and representatives in accordance with CDC quarantine guidelines, among other factors were cited by the court in its order.

Seamus Higson reflects on his experiences as an expert witness as a guide geared towards prospective experts on what to expect. His reflections also aim to assist attorneys in their assessment of whether potential experts might be suitable for hiring.

Patent Trial and Appeal Board rely upon expert witness testimony in invalidity finding of video data compression systems patent.

Technology Expert Witness Mike Slinn outlines his approach to rendering an expert opinion in the context of Daubert and Rule 702 while striving towards being believable and easily understood.

Expert witness testimony proves persuasive en route to invalidity finding by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Expert Randy D. Horsak presents an overview of several Daubert-related issues as they relate to the development and presenting of engineering and scientific evidence by an expert witness in a court of law for a class action lawsuit. Federal and State Courts have a wide spectrum of rulings with respect to the conclusion that Daubert applies or does not apply to expert testimony at the certification stage of a class action lawsuit. In some cases, the court may require a complete, conclusive Daubert inquiry, whereas in other cases the court may require only a limited, focused Daubert inquiry. Importantly, Daubert challenges cut both ways, and may be used by both the Plaintiffs and Defendants to their benefit. Typically, however, Daubert inquiries tend to benefit the Defendants in class action lawsuits. This expert’s commentary is based on actual court cases and other information.

Damages Expert Witnesses Scott D. Hampton, James T. Hosmer, and Karen H. Romrell explore the discoverability of settlement negotiations and the reasonable royalty calculations therein, reviewing the impact of In re MSTG and other recent cases. Such discoverable evidence may underscore a patent’s commercial value or have Daubert challenge implications. Attorneys should be careful when considering whether to expose its damages experts to settlement negotiations.

Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) have been causally linked to a wide variety of birth defects, including behavioral and cognitive defects, and even Autism using the FDA’s AERS database. Neuropharmacology drug expert and drug safety expert Dr. David Gortler provides an overview of the associated pharmacological effects and advises that women should stop taking SSRIs well in advance of a potential pregnancy to prevent the risk of autism and physical deformations.

Expert Witness Markus Jakobsson, Hossein Siadati and Mayank Dhiman describe a common but poorly known type of fraud – so-called liar buyer fraud – and explain why traditional anti-fraud technology has failed to curb this problem. They then introduce a counter-intuitive technique based on user interface modification to address liar-buyer fraud, and report result of experiments supporting that their technique has the potential of dramatically reducing fraud losses. They used a combination of role playing and questionnaires to determine the behavior and opinions of about 1700 subjects, and found that their proposed technique results in a statistically significant reduction of fraud rates for both men and women in an experimental setting. Their approach has not yet been tested on real e-commerce traffic, but appears sufficiently promising to do that. Their findings also support that men are more willing to lie and defraud than women are; but maybe more interestingly, their analysis shows that the technique they introduce make men as honest as women.

The Supreme Court of the United States recently affirmed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order No. 745, on pricing for demand response (DR). At the core of the debate was the Commission’s decision to require wholesale markets to pay successful demand response bids the same Locational Marginal Price (LMP) paid to electricity generators. Professors William Hogan and the late Alfred Kahn, two giants among economists, squared off. Expert Witness Charles Cicchetti discusses the arguments made, how the Commission eventually found a way to solve the conceptual debate, and offers his thoughts on where we go from here.

Business Information Exchange is an Internet Secure Portal for secure management, distribution, sharing, and use of business E-mails, documents and messages. It has three applications supporting three major types of information exchange systems: secure E-mail, secure instant messaging, and secure sharing of business documents. In addition to standard security services for E-mail letters, which are also applied to instant messages and documents, the system provides innovative features of privacy and full anonymity of users, their locations, actions, transactions, and exchanged resources. Expert Witness Sead Muftic, Nazri bin Abdullah and Ioannis Kounelis describe design, implementation, and use of the system.

Expert Witness Craig Rosenberg provides an introduction to the human factors discipline and outlines how specialists within the field study the sensory, cognitive, and motor aspects of human performance.