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The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

thehustle.co

11–20 of 113 posts

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#11
post #3

I've done several patent trials as a lay/fact witness in cases involving patents related to an employment contract addendum I created when I worked for Amazon. The contract described various early web tech hacks (such as embedding session IDs in the URL) and denied Amazon the chance to patent them (0). In the first one, I was in court while the plaintiff's damages expert witness (there to estimate how much this large…

That he was paid is not enough reason to invalidate his testimony. Everyone in court that day, the lawyers, the judge, you, were paid. Why not him? If he indeed has expertise that would win his party's case, what exactly is wrong with getting paid, even paid handsomely, for his being there? This seems a lawyerly sort of ad hominem to discount expert testimony without directly challenging the evidence.

Expert witness testimony, at least in this case, isn't about evidence.

It's a person, nominally an expert, saying what they think/know and providing some expert-y looking handwaving to back it up.

You've got two choices (at least) as an attorney for the opposing party: one, get into a domain turf war with the "expert" about whether what they've said is correct; two, discount the "expert" personally.

The problem with the first approach is that (at least in the case I was describing), there was nothing actually wrong with what the expert witness had said. If it actually was the case that the defendant had infringed on some validly held patents, then the expert's damages estimate was probably pretty accurate. The dilemma is that the defendant's whole case is based on having not infringed and/or the patents being invalid.

Consequently, there's zero motivation to get into the details of what the expert said, and every motivation to do something to as much as possible erase it from the minds of the jury.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#12
post #3

I've done several patent trials as a lay/fact witness in cases involving patents related to an employment contract addendum I created when I worked for Amazon. The contract described various early web tech hacks (such as embedding session IDs in the URL) and denied Amazon the chance to patent them (0). In the first one, I was in court while the plaintiff's damages expert witness (there to estimate how much this large…

That he was paid is not enough reason to invalidate his testimony. Everyone in court that day, the lawyers, the judge, you, were paid. Why not him? If he indeed has expertise that would win his party's case, what exactly is wrong with getting paid, even paid handsomely, for his being there? This seems a lawyerly sort of ad hominem to discount expert testimony without directly challenging the evidence.

Judges are paid by the state. Lawyers already known to be baised. This is expected.

I see the issue as juries not understanding the context around paid experts.

Paid experts are not impartial, so it is completely valid for a lawyer to discredit them on that basis and it is up to the lawyers who hired the expert to prove their testimony is honest.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#14
Whenever I hear someone suggesting that it’s easy to file frivolous lawsuits against doctors, or whomever, as a plaintiff‘s attorney - who pays for the report, the deposition time, the court reporter, and the videographer out of pocket - I groan.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#15
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That he was paid is not enough reason to invalidate his testimony. Everyone in court that day, the lawyers, the judge, you, were paid. Why not him? If he indeed has expertise that would win his party's case, what exactly is wrong with getting paid, even paid handsomely, for his being there? This seems a lawyerly sort of ad hominem to discount expert testimony without directly challenging the evidence.

Expert witness testimony, at least in this case, isn't about evidence. It's a person, nominally an expert, saying what they think/know and providing some expert-y looking handwaving to back it up. You've got two choices (at least) as an attorney for the opposing party: one, get into a domain turf war with the "expert" about whether what they've said is correct; two, discount the "expert" personally. The problem with…

Perhaps in this case. In the report I worked on though, a decent part of the report was in the vein of, "Even if party $X violated such and such as claimed, each of these damages that opposing expert enumerates is in fact much smaller for reasons $A, $B, and $C.

In this case, of course, it may well have been the case that the damages seemed reasonable if the company had indeed violated IP. So the lawyer basically made sure the jury knew the expert was paid but basically move on.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#16
post #3

I've done several patent trials as a lay/fact witness in cases involving patents related to an employment contract addendum I created when I worked for Amazon. The contract described various early web tech hacks (such as embedding session IDs in the URL) and denied Amazon the chance to patent them (0). In the first one, I was in court while the plaintiff's damages expert witness (there to estimate how much this large…

That he was paid is not enough reason to invalidate his testimony. Everyone in court that day, the lawyers, the judge, you, were paid. Why not him? If he indeed has expertise that would win his party's case, what exactly is wrong with getting paid, even paid handsomely, for his being there? This seems a lawyerly sort of ad hominem to discount expert testimony without directly challenging the evidence.

As far as I understand, "lawerly ad hominem" is most of what cross-examination is. The jury is free to recognize that impugning the character and/or motives of a witness is only a probabilistic argument that they're lying or wrong, and not a deductive argument.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#17

Why doesn't the court prescribe what the max. fee for expert witnesses can be?

States sort of do.

"The professional responsibility rules in many states prohibit lawyers from paying more than a “reasonable and customary fee” to expert witnesses."

The amount will vary based on the expert, but the idea is that if a, say, expert in computer programming would normally be paid $500/hour, if someone is paid $10,000/hour, something fishy is going on.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#18
I've done a few pieces of expert witness work over the 2-3 years (on deceptive design / dark patterns).

Although expert witness hourly rates may look high, it really depends on how many hours you bill in a given period. If you're an expert in something very niche, there might not be enough cases in a given year to give you a meaningful income.

Don't quit your tech job yet. Expert witness work is usually only lucrative if your expertise is in high demand, like personal injury or medical malpractice.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#19
I recently served on jury duty for a civil case and both sides hired a doctor to make statements in their favor. I thought it was funny that each lawyer attacked the other expert in the exact same way. “How much did you bill to be here? That seems like a lot”.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#20
I once sat on a jury for a personal injury trial. The medical expert witness for the insurance company was an orthopedic surgeon who was renowned as one of the best in the area. The witness for the plaintiff was the head of her department and the man who literally trained her to do her work professionally.
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