Articles Posted in Expert Witness Rules

On a warm October afternoon two years ago, wearing one of the yarmulkes that Jewish funeral directors provide for non-Jewish attendees, I helped shovel red Georgia dirt into the open grave of an old client and friend. As I did so, I pondered the unanswered question whether long-term side effects of her food poisoning a…

  The “laying on of hands” can resonate powerfully. In my background, it has spiritual and theological implications as a ritual of blessing or of healing. Can this and other senses beyond sight and hearing also be part of legitimate trial advocacy in conveying truth to jurors? The Georgia Court of Appeals recently said yes in…

“Independent” medical exams are commonplace in personal litigation, workers compensation, and disability insurance contexts.  Experience has made us cynical so that we now refer to these as “defense medical exams” or “insurance medical exams.” The New York Times on 3/31/09 carried an investigative article, “Exams of Injured Workers Feed Mutual Mistrust,” detailing abuses of such exams in…

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals was a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1993 that led to a sea change in standards for admitting expert testimony into evidence. Setting out a set of factors to be considered by courts in such decisions, it spread from questions of cutting edge science to the most mundane forms of…

It comes as no surprise that the Supreme Court of Georgia rejected constitutional challenges to the Daubert rule on expert testimony in the newly released decision of Mason v. Home Depot.  The text of the decision is copied below. I apologize for formatting errors that may appear. It appears that Georgia attorneys representing injured people…

Last month there was a news story about the New Jersey Committee on Attorney Advertising, a panel appointed by the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruling that attorney advertisements that tout listings such as the “Super Lawyers” listings violate professional responsibility rules against ads that compare lawyers’ services or create an “unjustified expectation about results.” …

When the Georgia General Assembly passed Senate Bill 3 — the “tort reform” conglomeration — in February 2005, most of the legislators hadn’t even read the entire bill, most of its provisions were not discussed in any detail, and hardly anyone understood it. To say it had a lot of poor draftsmanship is an understatement. …

A relaxed standard for determining whether expert testimony should be allowed to establish causation in a medical malpractice case has been adopted by New York’s Appellate Division, 2nd Department. The judges cautioned against an overly demanding approach to expert testimony which could result in prematurely choking off valid claims. The appellate court ruled that the…

We continue to see Daubert motions in which insurance defense lawyers attempt to exclude testimony of treating physicians on routine matters of diagnosis, causation and prognosis. We haven’t lost one of those motions yet, but they constitute a tremendous waste of time and resources for all involved. I would never accuse my brother lawyers of…

Judge Ashley Royal in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia has made a common sense decision in response to one of those frivolous Daubert motions to exclude testimony of treating physicians. In Flowers v. Wal-Mart, 2005 WL 2787101, decided 10/27/05, Judge Royal held: It is significant in this case that Dr.…