From the people who brought you the twinkie defense; the rise of the expert witness industry

Washington Monthly, June, 1987 by Blake Fleetwood

Professors aren't the only experts available totestify. There are authorities who assess wine collections, testify in dance accidents, analyze bird feathers for toxic contamination, evaluate swimming pools, consult on "swine management,' and otherwise report on things that can bend, break, explode, or make people sick. Naturally, expert economists are available to put a dollar figure on every calamity.

Since the mid-1970s, several federal and statecourts have liberalized the standards governing expert witnesses. (The earlier Frye decision never carried the weight of a Supreme Court ruling.) In many courts, a person can qualify as an expert merely by possessing special knowledge in an area about which the general public has no common knowledge. It doesn't matter whether that knowledge is abundant or sketchy.

The biggest shopping bazaar for theirtestimony is Trial, the magazine of the Association of Trial Lawyers. In the back of the magazine, where the personals would be in any weekly newspaper, dozens of witnesses strut their stuff. A Dr. Herbert H. Hill offers computer-simulated "automobile accident reconstruction'; Jonathan Cowan, Ph.D., of Prospect, Kentucky will aid in "defense of drunk driving cases.' ("Was your client intoxicated? Drug impaired? Or just presumed so?') The Medical Legal Consulting Service of Rockville, Maryland boasts of bringing in the highest verdicts. "Our statistics top the charts,' the ad states. "If experts have stated that they find no liability in a medical malpractice claim with catastrophic injuries . . . let us analyze the case for you.' The ad for a rival firm, Medi-Legal Services, "the heavyweight medical experts,' shows a respectable white-haired, bespectacled man sporting a surgical coat--and boxing gloves. "Any type of physician, surgeon, or medical expert available,' the ad reads.

For the more discreet witness, there are"witness brokers,' who will match witnesses to attorneys. In Washington, D.C., the Expert Witness Network, a dial-an-expert service, has doubled its pool of witnesses, mostly engineers, every year since it was founded in 1982. For a 20 percent fee, its founder and head, Gary Melickian, will match the expert with the case. Today, the Network cuts deals for nearly 1,000 witnesses. "I see a great future for the profession in areas like health spa and recreation accidents,' said Melickian.

It's hard to find a profession that doesn't haveits courtroom experts. For civil servants, taking the stand is one way of parleying public service into big bucks. David Crown, who retired from the CIA as a handwriting expert five years ago, finds the profession so good that he is turning business away even though he charges $150 per hour. "It's the most fun I've ever had in my life,' he said.

Even journalists are getting in on the action.Marilyn Lashner, a former assistant professor of communications at Temple University, helped a former U.S. attorney, Robert Curran, win an $800,000 libel judgment against The Philadelphia Inquirer by analyzing the text of the article. Perhaps you're wondering how one scientifically gauges and article's "objectivity.' Lashner's finely calibrated technique employs a "Coding Manual' to assign weights to different words. This is how Lashner buttressed an $81 million suit against financial columnist Jane Bryant Quinn and Newsweek. Her final analysis was a 38-page report dissecting Quinn's 700-word column. Eventually, the suit was settled for no money and a letter to the editor. "It gave me a couple of amusing hours,' Quinn recalls. "Her system has no room for ironies.'