In working with an attorney, you should be careful to keep the attorney from
having you testify on matters beyond your qualifications. If you are a mechanic,
do not allow an attorney that is trying to save money to have you testify as
a design engineer. Be cognizant of your particular area of expertise and do
not let the attorney drag you into other areas because he or she wants to save
money. There is no quicker way for an expert to lose credibility than to testify
regarding issues beyond his or her competence. Thoroughly consider your own
area of expertise and confine your testimony to opinions based on your expertise.
Expertise can be based on experience, education or training which will assist
the jury in deciding an issue.
Experts should, to the extent practical, do their own work. Many experts today
rely on others for extensive investigations and support services. When the expert
relies on deposition summaries done by others, he or she does not know the facts
as well as if the depositions were read by the expert. The expert will not know
the facts and details of an investigation done by someone else as well as he
should. No matter how competent the support help, generally such persons are
not as aware of the case difficulties and work that should be done. Thus, when
the expert does not do the work, additional work that naturally should be done
often is not. It is only by fully focusing on the facts of a particular case
that the expert can truly provide a comprehensive evaluation and testimony.
I often find that experts are not conversant with company documents pertaining
to the issues in a case even when I have spent an extensive amount of time going
over them. Experts often are not conversant with the basic facts even when I
have gone over them. I find these problems are minimized when the expert does
his own work.
This is the second in a series of articles for the EWJ by Attorney Cabaniss.
For additional information call John C. Cabaniss, Esq. at (414) 278-6066.
[The Expert Witness Journal, December 1994]