- How procedural improvements could help curb speculative and abusive lawsuits [Stuart Taylor, Jr., American Spectator, recommending Prof. Donald Elliott’s plan for judicial pre-screening of complaints; Richard Reinsch]
- Proposed revisions to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure would curtail depositions, interrogatories [ABA Journal, more; Wajert] Better use of incentives could reduce costs of discovery [Rebecca Womeldorf, WLF]
- “The ‘e’ in e-mail might as well stand for evidence” — Bloomberg’s Norm Pearlstine at Google Big Tent DC [@jeffjohnroberts]
- Contracting around litigation rules: “Why Is Privatized Procedure So Rare?” [Dave Hoffman]
- Walden v. Fiore: “Cert grant for civ pro buffs” [Ann Althouse; more on constitutional limits on personal jurisdiction from Stephen Sachs via Linda Mullenix, Jotwell via Will Baude]
- California, Wisconsin toughen up lax rules on expert witness admissibility [Bernstein, more] Florida moves to adopt Daubert gatekeeping standard [Maggie Tamburro, Bullseye, William Bissett/Lauren Soble]
- Lawyer disciplinary proceedings make good occasion for noticing that vague notice pleading can trample defendants’ due process interest, but will anyone apply the lesson beyond lawyers? [John Steele, Legal Ethics Forum]
Posts Tagged ‘expert witnesses’
Appalling: “New Study Finds That State Crime Labs Are Paid Per Conviction”
I just posted a few days ago about the many scandals of state police forensic labs that have been found to employ corner-cutting or shoddy methods in the course of obtaining positive identifications and convictions. What I didn’t realize is that — according to a new paper by Roger Koppl and Meghan Sacks in the journal Criminal Justice Ethics — many crime labs actually are paid by the conviction. That practice goes on in states that include Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Virginia. If we incentivize false-positive identification, should we really be surprised when it happens? [Radley Balko]
ABA Journal on police forensic lab scandals
Mark Hansen in the ABA Journal with an overview of how crime labs have finally come under scrutiny following a “string of shoddy, suspect and fraudulent results” in Boston, New York, North Carolina, Nassau County, N.Y. and elsewhere.
In St. Paul, Minn., assistant public defender Lori Traub stumbled into her local lab’s problems and
says she was horrified by what she found: The lab, an old-fashioned “cop shop,” was run by a police sergeant with no scientific background, had no written operating procedures, didn’t clean instruments between testing, allowed technicians unlimited access to the drug vault, and didn’t have anyone checking anyone else’s work. Analysts didn’t know what a validity study was, used Wikipedia as a technical reference, and in their lab reports referred to “white junk” clogging an instrument.
It gets much worse. A West Virginia state serologist, following the DNA clearance of a man he had previously identified as a rapist, “was eventually found to have falsified test results in as many as 134 cases during a 10-year period.” Oklahoma City Police Department crime lab chemist Joyce Gilchrist
who testified as a prosecution expert in 23 death penalty cases, including those of 12 inmates who were later executed, was fired in 2001 for doing sloppy work and giving false or misleading testimony. Nicknamed “Black Magic” by detectives for her seeming ability to get lab results no other chemist could, Gilchrist was never prosecuted for her alleged misdeeds, though she reportedly was named a defendant in at least one lawsuit against the city by a convicted rapist who was later exonerated.
More: And according to a new paper, it turns out that many state police labs are actually paid per conviction, a practice that tends to incentive false-positive error.
Medical roundup
- Defense medico-legal expert sees 1,000+ cases a year, testimony infuriates NYC judge [Eric Turkewitz: first, second, third, overview posts]
- More commentary on Supreme Court’s generic drug pre-emption case, Mutual v. Bartlett [James Beck, more, Michael Krauss, earlier]
- New JAMA paper, “The Looming Threat of Liability for Accountable Care Organizations and What to Do About It” [Bill of Health]
- “Obamacare and Activist State Courts Drive Up Health Plan Costs” [Hans Bader, CEI “Open Market”]
- New York: emergency medical technicians protected by sovereign immunity principles [Alex Stein, Bill of Health]
- “A New FDA for the Age of Personalized, Molecular Medicine” [Peter Huber, Manhattan Institute via Alex Tabarrok]
- From an unexpected source? Left-leaning Center for American Progress publishes report on reducing cost of defensive medicine by Ezekiel Emanuel et al. Meanwhile, trial lawyers trumpet study of veterans’ hospitals they say undercuts defensive medicine case [client-recruitment site AboutLawsuits.com] And in the UK: “13,000 died needlessly at 14 worst NHS trusts” [Telegraph]
Medical roundup
- New ACA regulations from the feds restrict employer wellness programs [Jon Hyman; Leslie Francis, Bill of Health]
- Frequent-flyer defense medical examiner comes to grief in New York [Eric Turkewitz]
- Fecal transplants (that’s not a misprint) appear to hold out hope of saving a lot of lives, except for the mountain of FDA paperwork blocking them [Amar Toor/The Verge, Maggie Koerth-Baker] Enter the grey market [Beth Skwarecki]
- Why can’t the FDA catch up with Europe on sunscreens? [Alex Tabarrok]
- “The banning of catastrophic-only plans infuriates me the most…. the only plans that are actually financially sensible for a healthy individual to purchase.” [MargRev comments section]
- More on the recent study of malpractice suits by a group of Johns Hopkins researchers [Christopher Robinette]
- For all his public health pretensions, Michael Bloomberg “has no idea what he’s talking about” on medical marijuana [Jacob Sullum]
- Another look at asylums? [James Panero, City Journal]
- Feds’ war on Google pharma ads reflects no credit on D.C. [Brian Doherty]
“Math on Trial: How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom”
As grist for expert witness testimony and forensics, mathematics sounds as if it should be more rigorous and amenable to consistent results than other disciplines — psychiatry, say. “However, mathematicians Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez argue in Math on Trial that in at least 10 instances over the past century, innocent or wrongly accused defendants have been imprisoned or publicly harassed in part due to simple mathematical errors at trial, such as believing two events are independent (when they are not) or underappreciating the power of exponential growth.” [Bharath Parthasarathy, Washington Independent Review of Books]
Police and prosecution roundup
- Forensics scandal keeps widening, as FBI agents trained state and local examiners in faulty methods [WaPo, Radley Balko] New York Times wades into case of Mississippi pathologist Steven Hayne [Reason] “Massachusetts Lab Scandal Leads to Fears of the Guilty Being Freed, Not So Much About the Innocent Being Jailed” [Shackford]
- “Speed camera reform gains momentum with Maryland lawmakers” [Washington Examiner, editorial, WBAL]
- “Gas masks, helmets for state alcohol-control agents — Everyone is a law-enforcement agent these days” [Steven Greenhut/PSI]
- How the media hatched the “bath salts face-chewer” tale [Sullum]
- “FBI investigating Utah state trooper for arresting sober people, charging them with DUI, lying on witness stand.” [@radleybalko summarizing Salt Lake City Tribune]
- Looking forward to 2013 docket in white-collar crime [Peter Henning, NYT DealBook]
- Bruce Green (Fordham), “Prosecutors and Professional Regulation” [SSRN via White Collar Crime Prof]
The quest for asbestos defendants, Chapter CCXXXIII
“In answers to interrogatories, [the mesothelioma-diagnosed] plaintiff identified Colgate’s Cashmere Bouquet talcum powder as the sole source of her asbestos exposure.” [Ron Miller]
Product liability roundup
- “Judge in Asbestos Litigation Says Navy Ships Aren’t Products” [Legal Intelligencer]
- NYT goes in search of the trial lawyers’ case on the Blitz gas can bankruptcy [earlier here, here]
- Gun control lobby hails as “groundbreaking” NY appellate court allowing suit against gun manufacturer [WSJ Law Blog, NYLJ]
- “Mechanical Bull Tosses Rider, Prevails in Court” [Abnormal Use]
- Well-known expert witness pops up in consumer popcorn injury case [Drug and Device Law] 2004 Missouri workplace exposure case: “‘Popcorn Lung’ Couple Gets $20M Award, Files for Bankruptcy” [ABC News]
- “Bumbo Baby Seat Recalled Because It Is Only 99.999475% Safe” [Skenazy, Agitator]
- “Summary Judgment For Crocs in Massachusetts Escalator Injury Case” [Abnormal Use]
The terrible things that can happen in drug labs
And we’re not just talking the amateur meth kind. [Scott Greenfield]