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PubMedDate not supplied

Expert testimony regarding child sexual abuse.

Expert testimony plays an important role in child sexual abuse litigation in criminal, juvenile, and family courts. This article discusses legal issues relating to expert testimony, including: (a) when expert testimony is permitted, (b) qualifications of expert witnesses on child sexual abuse, (c) permissible bases supporting expert testimony, (d) expert testimony on ultimate factual and legal issues, (e) the reasonable certainty standard of expert testimony, (f) the inappropriateness of equating clinical decision making with the legal degrees of proof, and (g) application of the doctrine of res judicata in litigation regarding child sexual abuse in family court. The article also provides a summary of contemporary case law regarding expert testimony offered in child sexual abuse litigation.

Battered Child Syndrome↗
PubMed1996

Expert testimony, legal reasoning, and justice. The case for adopting a data-based standard of care in allegations of medical negligence in the NICU.

Sunstein has written, "First, and most obviously, judgments about specific cases must be made consistent with one another. A requirement of coherence, or principled consistency, is a hallmark of analogic reasoning (as it is of reasoning of almost all sorts)." In cases of alleged medical negligence, our current system of malpractice litigation supports the possibility that inaccurate anecdotal testimony by expert witnesses may be credited equally or even preferred to more accurate testimony based on empiric data. This condition lends itself to inconsistent outcomes that violate basic principles of justice. In our view, the standard of medical care ought not be described by the idiosyncratic postulation of single behavior (analogous to promulgating the equation of a single line on a Cartesian plane). Rather, the standard of medical care is best viewed as a distribution of behaviors (family of lines) that can be empirically determined to account for most practice decisions in comparable cases. The recent Daubert formulation of admissibility of expert testimony can be interpreted as providing judicial support for a hierarchy of expert testimony in cases of alleged medical negligence. On this view, testable comparisons of the behavior in question against reliably documented distributions of standard medical behavior in similar circumstances rank higher than untestable comparisons using unreliable anecdotal recollections of individual expert's undocumented experience. We believe that widespread adoption by the medical community of the principle that the value of expert testimony describing the standard of medical care increases in direct proportion to its congruence with a data-based determination of the distribution of skill and care ordinarily provided in similar circumstances would significantly reduce the potential for injustice visited on plaintiff and defendant alike.

Expert Testimony↗
PubMed2004

The effects of rational and experiential information processing of expert testimony in death penalty cases.

Past research examining the effects of actuarial and clinical expert testimony on defendants' dangerousness in Texas death penalty sentencing has found that jurors are more influenced by less scientific pure clinical expert testimony and less influenced by more scientific actuarial expert testimony (Krauss & Lee, 2003; Krauss & Sales, 2001). By applying cognitive-experiential self-theory (CEST) to juror decision-making, the present study was undertaken in an attempt to offer a theoretical rationale for these findings. Based on past CEST research, 163 mock jurors were either directed into a rational mode or experiential mode of processing. Consistent with CEST and inconsistent with previous research using the same stimulus materials, results demonstrate that jurors in a rational mode of processing more heavily weighted actuarial expert testimony in their dangerousness assessments, while those jurors in the experiential condition were more influenced by clinical expert testimony. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Expert testimony based on decision analysis: a malpractice case report.

OBJECTIVE: Expert testimony in malpractice cases is often subjective and biased. Decision-analytic techniques might provide an objective basis for such testimony. DESIGN: Case report. This article reports the case of a patient with chest pain that resulted in a malpractice suit alleging a delay in diagnosis of coronary artery disease. SETTING: The case occurred in a private practice; the expert witnesses and the decision analysis originated from a university teaching hospital. METHODS: A decision tree and threshold analysis were used to define the thresholds of disease probability at which either testing or treatment should be implemented. The expert testimony of two witnesses that exercise stress testing was the standard of care was compared with the results of the decision analysis. MAIN RESULTS: Decision analysis supported the view that cardiac catheterization would have been the more appropriate test. CONCLUSIONS: Techniques of decision analysis provide a structured and quantitative basis for empirical judgment and may help to minimize current problems with expert testimony.

Chest Pain↗
PubMed2004

Timing of eyewitness expert testimony, jurors' need for cognition, and case strength as determinants of trial verdicts.

In 2 experiments, college students read a murder-trial transcript that included or did not include court-appointed expert testimony about eyewitness memory. The testimony either preceded or followed the evidence, and the judge's final instructions reminded or did not remind jurors about the expert's testimony. Expert testimony decreased perceptions of guilt and eyewitness believability when it followed the evidence and preceded the judge's reminder. This effect occurred whether the prosecution case was moderately weak or moderately strong. Jurors' need for cognition (NC) was curvilinearly related to convictions in a strong case. Low and high NC jurors convicted less than did moderate NC jurors. Greater scrutiny by high NC jurors may make them more likely to consider evidence for the weaker side.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Ethical issues related to medical expert testimony.

The obstetrician-gynecologist who provides expert witness testimony is recognized as an important participant in the medical liability system. He or she must define a standard of care and opine whether the standard has been breached and whether any perceived injury was caused by the breach. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) ethical guidelines insist that the testimony be objective (free from intentioned distortion) and that the witness not assume an advocacy or partisan role. The ethical and professional boundaries of appropriate expert testimony as delineated by ACOG are more restrictive than the legal boundaries. Members of ACOG should be held to more restrictive ACOG guidelines and egregious testimony condemned by ACOG. Prospective peer review, increased judicial review, and testimony banks are other examples of methods to improve the quality of expert witness testimony. Alternatives to litigation for medical liability disputes and further tort reform might also make the system fairer and more sustainable.

Expert Testimony↗
PubMed1999

An expert experiment--medico-legal expert testimony.

For the past eight years, Radiology Associates of Albuquerque has provided physician expert testimony to plaintiff and defense attorneys. Initially, the business was confined to radiology consultation only. The division has expanded; it now includes more than 35 specialties and a national client base. This article will include a history of the division's growth and lessons learned as well as a look at the future of expert testimony in light of increasing emphasis on standards of care. Medical marketing in the present as well as in the future will also be addressed.

Expert Testimony↗
PubMed2001

Neurolitigation: a perspective on the elements of expert testimony for extending the Daubert challenge.

Scientific expert witness testimony has the potential for affecting most court decisions in civil and criminal proceedings. Since experts were first utilized in English courts beginning in the 14th century, most contemporary courts struggle with seeking a balance between plaintiff and defense counsel allowing each party its day in court while taking into account the work which other courts have done previously in determining the admissibility of expert witness testimony. When these challenges present themselves in the courtroom, often other courts have approached these identical issues, many in proceedings involving the same expert(s). Confronted with these challenges, trial judges want to understand whether a new Daubert hearing must be held, deal with the issue from a clean slate approach or whether they must reinvent the proverbial wheel. Given these dilemmas, this exposition is based within a heuristic approach that will focus on the consideration of comprehensive data inclusion from an evidentiary foundation as it applies to expert witness testimony admissibility in neurolitigation. While the evidential force of FRE 702 specifically applies to admissibility of scientific evidence, it makes sense that along with scientific, objective data, inclusion of non-medical and other data in forming and admitting expert opinions, have mutual bearing upon the validity of opinions arrived at through neuropsychological assessment. It is these multi-data that should be factored into account when applying the Federal Rule of Evidence 702 scientific admissibility standard. Data from other relevant sources is just as vital as data obtained from objective measures, and co-exists with objective data. Without the integration of this information into resulting diagnostic data and opinions, one's methodology is open to scrutiny and can willfully be characterized as engaging in "junk science". Specific, pragmatic issues are discussed in order to avoid the plausible "junk science" question and to ultimately arrive at a factual and evidenced-based admissibility and reliability determination for the courts. Given the current standard, this article proposes an inclusionary method in neurolitigation as it would necessarily apply to Federal Rule of Evidence 702 which would extend to the integration of data outside medical and scientific information bases to establish accurate opinions for the trier of fact. In so doing, neuropsychological test data, non-medical data and expert testimony would be strengthened through inter-data consistency.

Activities of Daily Living↗