By Sterling Anthony, CPP, expert witness in: packaging, logistics, marketing, warnings, patent-infringement, and cargo loading & securement.
From the onset, a packaging expert witness should regard an Expert Report as a communication of persuasion, the purpose being to convince stakeholders that the contained opinions are true within the standard of a reasonable degree of certainty. The stakeholders will vary in their willingness to be convinced, and the opposing side will be skeptical, if not hostile. The Report, therefore, should constitute a gestalt, the whole more than the sum of its parts.
In federal cases, an Expert Report must comply with the statutory elements detailed in Rule 26 of The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; and, although an Expert Report in state cases isn’t governed under that rubric, it must embody certain elements, just to meet the threshold of professionalism.
Whether the venue is federal or state, an Expert Report should contain: the case caption; the expert’s name and business address; the client-attorney’s name and business address; a statement of purpose; a summary; a synopsis of the facts; an explanation of methodology; list of case materials reviewed; list of references i.e. books, articles, standards, tests, etc.; discussion of opinions; conclusions; statement as to the right to supplement; and, date and signature (notarized, if required).
As for aesthetics, the look of the Report should invite reading; however, as fundamental as that is, it’s only window dressing, if the Report fails in other key aspects. Opposing counsel will dissect the Report for opportunities to shoot holes in it. The experienced expert will not supply ammunition, in the forms of: poor grammar, spelling, and punctuation; poor paragraph composition; disjointed sequencing; imprecise wording; a lack of command of the facts; weak correlation between opinions and Counts contained in the Complaint; distortion and misrepresentation; and most damaging, faulty reasoning and fallacious logic.
An expert should not rely on the client-attorney as proofreader, despite the fact that no client-attorney will submit to opposing counsel or to the Court an obviously flawed Report. Opposing counsel, believing the Report to be flawed, will eagerly await deposition or trial. A worse possible consequence of a flawed Report is that the Court disqualifies the expert. Another incentive against composing an inferior Report: in some states, juries are given access to Reports. That aside, an expert can’t be effective in front of a jury if the majority of cross-examination is spent defending an ambiguous, or otherwise, flawed Report.
It’s common practice for a client-attorney to request strategic changes to the Expert Report. An example would be a rewording that more effectively captures a particular legal concept. What’s not common practice is for a client-attorney to have to essentially rewrite the Report, an unwanted expenditure of time and effort; moreover, if the expert is questioned under oath about “authorship,” the answer might cast the expert as a hand puppet whose supposed opinions are those of, and controlled by, the client-attorney as the puppeteer.
Regardless of how well a Report is (or isn’t) written, the client-attorney should not be blindsided by the opinions, because they should have been disclosed during prior discussions. An expert’s opinions should be independently derived and honestly held, but there’s no ethical requirement that those opinions be favorable to the client-attorney.
Faced with previously-disclosed unfavorable opinions, rather than commission an Expert Report, the client-attorney can evaluate options, for example, receptiveness to settlement. When it’s known that the opinions are favorable, a good policy is for the initial submission to be titled, Preliminary Report, a distinction to be removed after review and revisions. Added insurance is accorded if the Preliminary Report is read over the phone to the client-attorney before submission.
An Expert Report does not have an expiration date. It forever lurks somewhere, and the expert never knows when it might surface. The expert should bear that in mind with every syllable.
Not every expert is an excellent writer; however, since Report writing is integral to being an expert, a reasonable level of competency should be mandatory. An expert who doesn’t measure up in that regard lacks a key component in the delivery of services.
Sterling Anthony, CPP, is a consultant to the industrial, institutional, and government sectors and an expert to the legal community. He is a former manager at Fortune 100 companies and a former instructor at two major universities. His contact information is: 100 Renaissance Center-Box 43176, Detroit, MI 48243; (office) 313-531-1875; (cell) 313-623-0522; (fax) 313-531-1972; thepackagingexpertwitness@gmail; www.thepackagingexpertwitness.com