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: Expert Witness Marketing

Don't Guess in Your Expert Report

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In a teleseminar on making your expert reports effective and defensible, attorney Steve Babitsky cautioned against speculating or guessing (or even the appearance of having done so):

First of all, don't speculate or guess. If you don't know what the answer is to something and you're writing a report, either leave it out or don't speculate. Don't just say, "It was around 40 miles an hour." "Around 40 miles an hour" is not a scientific way of expressing yourself. And don't just say, "40 miles an hour," if you have no way of backing that up, because somebody's going to ask you, "Where did you get the 40 miles per hour?" And the answer could be very difficult if there's no scientific way.

I was doing a demonstration once with a very high-powered accounting expert. He used a 2.6 percent formula to discount the valuation in this very extensive report. The only problem was, when I asked him to to the blackboard and explain where he came up with 2.6 percent, he couldn't. Well, that's the end of that case. In other words, if you have something in your report, speculating or guessing or making it up, that's a serious problem.

It might seem obvious that you shouldn't "guess" in an expert report, but what could an attorney attack that would make it appear you were guessing?

Full post as published by Expert Witness Marketing on February 25, 2011 (boomark / email).