The lucrative economics of expert witnesses • Hacker News Board

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#51

Post by lupire » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:14 PM UTC

devchix wrote: post #3

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #2

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 is Argument From Authority by definition. If the evidence were self-evident, you wouldn't have an Expert Witness.

Lies cost more than truth, so the price of testimony matters.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#52

Post by Retric » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:16 PM UTC

DangitBobby wrote: post #42

cool_dude85 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But everyone knows the lawyer for one of the parties in a trial is representing his party and is not some neutral observer. But expert witnesses are presented as essentially neutral experts making their own determinations on areas of expertise. Being explicit about the money paid to the expert makes the situation much more clear; not so for the lawyer.

I disagree. If the lawyer is trying to call the process into question rather than addressing the facts, it's important to remind the jury of lawyer's questionable part of the process as well. Fallacious reasoning shouldn't stand in a courtroom.

Pointing out someone is in effect a highly paid actor is addressing the facts. Both the content of what was said and the manor in which they said it should be considered suspect.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#53

Post by ghostbrainalpha » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #43

I went to one day of the Apple - Samsung trial in San Jose in front of Judge Lucy Koh. Google indemnifies Android manufacturers against stuff like this, so we were heavily involved. Samsung put up three expert witnesses the day I was there. Amber Heard's lawyer is incompetent, because she should have asked what they got paid per hour , not the total. They have to know that. The first guy said he got $450 / hour. The…

Do "expert witnesses" really put 6 months of work into their testimony?

That kind of confuses me. It seems like if someone puts that much work into something they are more like a Detective on a case, than an outside resource.

Does that make sense? Like isn't that way too much time to assume they are unbiased?

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#54

Post by gene-h » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

Had a professor who taught structural engineering and served as an expert witness, he said we'd better pay attention in class because there's more money to be made when stuff falls down than building it up.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#55

Post by AlbertCory » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #53

AlbertCory wrote: post #43

I went to one day of the Apple - Samsung trial in San Jose in front of Judge Lucy Koh. Google indemnifies Android manufacturers against stuff like this, so we were heavily involved. Samsung put up three expert witnesses the day I was there. Amber Heard's lawyer is incompetent, because she should have asked what they got paid per hour , not the total. They have to know that. The first guy said he got $450 / hour. The…

Do "expert witnesses" really put 6 months of work into their testimony? That kind of confuses me. It seems like if someone puts that much work into something they are more like a Detective on a case, than an outside resource. Does that make sense? Like isn't that way too much time to assume they are unbiased?

Yes, they do.

It probably won't surprise anyone that their "declaration" is written by the lawyers, and then they go over it, line by line, making sure it's something they would have said.

The check that they are "unbiased" is that the other side asks them "does your compensation depend in any way on the outcome of this trial?" Of course it doesn't, officially.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#56

Post by erosenbe0 » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #2

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…

Noble. Thanks for standing up for a cause. Amazon and other large caps have some sketchy patents but shouldn't we judge as follows: A) Does Amazon use its patent portfolio largely on defense, never broadly asserting sketchy patents? B) Does Amazon ever sell tranches of patents to non practicing entities?

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#57

Post by matthewdgreen » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #2

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…

Did the Amazon lawyer tell the jury their own hourly billing rate?

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#58

Post by klik99 » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:33 PM UTC

I really don't want to go into details for obvious reasons, but I was close with someone who was called frequently for cases regarding sampled music with some pretty big stakes and could speak with a lot of perceived (and honestly, well earned) authority. He would show an FFT analysis and time waveform and say "See? they look nothing alike". I pointed out that it's pretty easy for things to look completely different on FFT and waveforms but be the same sound. I got the sense it was a pretty lucrative side hustle. This was many years ago and I don't think the problem has gotten any better.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#59

Post by devchix » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #44

devchix wrote: 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.

That's deeply naive. Incentives matter to humans. A lot in fact. Ask any lawyer that has hired expert witnesses. Over there entire career, ask them how many times the expert witness they hired did not come to conclusions supporting the side they were hired by. Even amongst lawyers that have hired 100's of experts, that number is usually zero. In theory, an expert should be using their expertise to assess the situatio…

Well I went to the same law school my cousin Vinny did, and I'm pretty sure you can disqualify the expert witness by asking questions like, what's the correct ignition timing be on a 1955 Bel Air Chevrolet with a 327 cubic-inch engine and a four-barrel carburetor? You can also have your own expert witness called to directly rebut their expert witness.

If expert witnesses are never paid, no one will be an expert witness. What's that world like?

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#60

Post by matthewdgreen » Mon, Jun 13, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #53

AlbertCory wrote: post #43

I went to one day of the Apple - Samsung trial in San Jose in front of Judge Lucy Koh. Google indemnifies Android manufacturers against stuff like this, so we were heavily involved. Samsung put up three expert witnesses the day I was there. Amber Heard's lawyer is incompetent, because she should have asked what they got paid per hour , not the total. They have to know that. The first guy said he got $450 / hour. The…

Do "expert witnesses" really put 6 months of work into their testimony? That kind of confuses me. It seems like if someone puts that much work into something they are more like a Detective on a case, than an outside resource. Does that make sense? Like isn't that way too much time to assume they are unbiased?

If it involves substantial code review of a huge codebase (think, all of Android) it sure does take a lot of hours. The opposing counsel will often make it even less efficient by tightly limiting the tools that can be installed on a given workstation. Source: I've done this work in the past, but don't now.