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The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

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Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#61

Post by l33t2328 »

lupire wrote: post #51
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.

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.

But we defer to experts all the time in life because it’s impossible to verify evidence yourself in all(or most, or even many) circumstances.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#62

Post by paultopia »

klik99 wrote: post #58

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…

unfortunately, this sort of garbage is really common in court. the FBI crime lab is kind of notorious for this kind of nonsense comparison --- see https://www.propublica.org/article/with-photo-analysis-fbi-l...

Every few years I teach a kind of super-basic stats (plus some python) class to law students mostly for the purpose of equipping them with the tools to notice that expert witnesses are lying to them.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#63

Post by ghaff »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #49
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I meant was that expert witnesses are not in the courtroom to testify on matters of fact. They are presented (and potentially qualified) as "experts" and are their to tell the court their conclusions about some matter.

Thanks for the clarification. > They are presented (and potentially qualified) as "experts" Does this not follow a proper scientific method? The expert draws some conclusion based on some scientific process they performed. The other side can challenge the data, method, chain of custody, record keeping, expertise of anyone working on it, and so on. You keep putting the term expert in quotes. What is the bar of an expe…

>The expert draws some conclusion based on some scientific process they performed.

Certainly there are cases where expert witnesses are commissioned to conduct some series of tests/analysis and write a report.

But tons of other are things like:

- Did so and so follow customary industry best practices?

- Based on your knowledge of the industry did Company A's actions negatively impact Company B? (Backed up with lots of references.)

and so forth.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#64

Post by milsorgen »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #57
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?

Tbf, they're probably not paid hourly.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#65

Post by gbronner »

jmyeet wrote: post #30

The Depp-Heard trial was fascinating in many ways. This article mentions Dr Shannon Curry specifically. Whatever she was paid was money well spent. It wasn't just her testimony but how she handled cross-examination and how she carried herself (eg [1][2]). By comparison, the Heard equivalent expert witness got utterly destroyed on cross [3]. And then you had Dr Spiegel who, depending on who you ask, might be called 60…

The cost of the Heard Depp trial could have paid for a pretty good movie...

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#66

Post by HWR_14 »

ghaff wrote: post #10
HWR_14 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? His continuing to be paid depends on him saying what the lawyers want. See also one of the main issues that people have with arbitration (that the companies supply repeat business to the arbiters they choose, so they wouldn't want to rule that hard against the company or th…

In fairness, one of the things that happens is that expert witnesses get chosen based in part on past record, writings, etc. When I wrote a report, I wasn't pressured to write anything I didn't believe. However, I had previously written a public research note that laid out my take on the case pretty unambiguously.

I totally believe that.

I don't necessarily think it's as direct as "cross lawyer X, never work for lawyer X". I think past expert testimony is a big part of that past record that lawyer Y will look at, and people who want to become professional expert witnesses know that.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#67

Post by afian »

This might be interesting to the hn crowd. I was an expert witness for a big lawsuit in California where thousands of newspaper delivery drivers were systematically underpaid by a major US newspaper company (https://www.sacbee.com/news/business/article2613374.html). The delivery drivers did not keep records of which customers they delivered to, but given the customer manifest and subscription data, I was able to use route optimization (which I learned in school at MIT) to calculate a baseline for how much they were paid. link: https://afi.io/case_studies/callahan_blaine

edit: since people asked - I was paid well in the range of a few hundred k. Totally worth doing the math homework in school.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#68

Post by sigstoat »

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?

there’s a lot of time spent reviewing material and then explaining it to the lawyers. the bigger the case the more lawyers there are to explain it to.

then you review everything from the other side. and your fellow experts. and write a bunch of stuff. explain that to the lawyers.

fly across country to go to motions hearings, hearing is rescheduled, go home, fly back, listen to the other side’s experts. provide rebuttal testimony, etc.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#69

Post by sigstoat »

AlbertCory wrote: post #55
ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

my wife works as an expert witness. she and her non-lawyer assistant write everything themselves.

the lawyers can request changes. sometimes she’ll make them. that doesn’t lose her any business.

Re: The lucrative economics of expert witnesses

#70

Post by pc86 »

devchix wrote: post #59
Enginerrrd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 witne…

I'm surprised to see it suggested that being unable to immediately recall arcane trivia in a high pressure situation would be a disqualifying feature, but then... gestures broadly at every technical interview.

Witnesses are already paid. You can be subpoenaed to present fact or character testimony, and you're required by law to show up (but you're still paid).

I'm pretty sure subpoenaing random experts isn't the solution, but $1,500/hr is pretty crazy regardless of your field. Perhaps there should be a system based around licensure where you get paid a market rate rather than 10x, and doing a certain number of hours every year is considered a public service and a requirement for your license, similar to how many attorneys do pro bono work?

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