The use and abuse of experts

There are basically three kinds of experts:

• All-purpose experts – these are experts (often mechanical engineers) who testify as a full-time or almost full- time profession. They tend to concentrate on one side or the other, with rare exceptions. They usually advertise or are affiliated with some service which furnishes experts in various fields. Thorough background checks will reveal these are professional witnesses; especially information about their frequent use by one side or the other, their frequent appearances in court and the amount of money they make. They are very vulnerable to cross examination when the opposing attorney lists the length and breadth of the types of cases in which they have testified. The ADA prohibits discrimination based on disability. ADA lawyer can help if you were discriminated against at work
• Academics – these are experts whose primary profession is as a full-time professor at some academic institution. They rarely have testifying skills.
• Hybrids – these are usually the best experts in that they do not testify full time, hold real academic positions, but have acquired the skill necessary to avoid having their opinions watered CSC naiomy fir isv down or eliminated by cross-examination.

Padding qualifications

All-purpose experts tend to pad their qualifications by either association with academic institutions or businesses. They will claim to have some kind of professorship or other relationship to a university. Thorough investigation will usually reveal that they have occasionally- taught some special course in isolated situations, but in fact are not really any part of the faculty. The same thing is true with respect to business affiliations. They may have done some small job or jobs for business entities years ago, but they are never regularly consulted except by lawyers.

Padding the bill

All-purpose experts and some hybrids will inevitably pad their bill. They will claim some reasonable hourly rate either to their clients or to the opposing attorney in trial, but their bills will be far larger than these modest hourly rates. Not only do they claim ficti-tious hours, but they will often claim some massive amount of time spent by underlings in research or checking data. Some years ago we lost a case because the expert failed to understand a tragically simple mathematical problem, which was so easy the jury was shaking their heads in disbelief. Later, when we sued him and his company for negligence and went through his bill in detail in discovery, it was clear that many of the hours padded into the final number were simply a method of keeping the basic hourly down and at the same time claiming thousands of extra dollars.

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