An Editorial
The latest issue of The Expert & the Law published by the National Forensic Center had an interesting editorial about ethics of experts. We thought it so in keeping with our own views that we wanted to share with you some of our thoughts.
MEC refers experts to attorneys who rely on our recommendations to provide them with good honest experts in a specific discipline. I must stress the "honest" characteristic of MEC's standards. When an expert will say whatever an attorney wants him to say, he hurts himself, MEC and experts in general. There have been too many judges who feel experts are hired guns who will lie for money.
If MEC learns of an expert in our stable who has prostituted himself, we will drop him like a hot potato. The same applies if he fails to reveal key information about himself which could be used to discredit him.
We do have a feedback system in which we seek the comments of our clients after they have used an expert who we have recommended. This is one of the methods in which we keep our stable clean.
One adverse comment alone is not adequate for us to stop recommending an expert. Let me give you an example.
An attorney I know and respect cornered me in an airport where we chanced to meet and asked if I had referred the expert on the other side of a particular case in which he had been involved. When I said I had, he told me that in his view the individual was way off base in his opinions. I asked if the attorney had won his case, and when he said he had lost, I reduced the value of his remarks. While they may have been correct, they may have also been sour grapes. However, we did go on to ask the attorney to whom we had referred the expert for his opinion and we will keep our friend's comments in mind in the future.
In another case, we recommended a master on a grounding case. During deposition he volunteered that he had been the master of a vessel which had grounded and the Coast Guard had taken action against his license because of it. He had told neither the attorney nor MEC of this incident, but it markedly reduced his value to the client and severely embarrassed us.
MEC will not refer experts who prostitute themselves on the witness stand. We certainly want to receive the opinions of our clients about such individuals and will check into their ethics when such matters are brought to our attention.
MEC does not shop for experts who will support a particular position unless we too believe that it is valid. In some cases, we have told attorneys that we thought they had a weak or nonexistent case. However, it is not our position to render such an opinion (unless we are personally hired to do so). We do recognize that two honest experts may have differing opinions and thus in some cases where the first expert we contact says he cannot support a particular position, we may ask another expert if he is willing to take a case. However, it is difficult, and many times impossible to form an opinion without reviewing the depositions and looking at the scene. Thus we look primarily for an expert in a particular requested discipline and are not particularly concerned as to his opinion. When an attorney has a loosing case, we feel it is better for him to know this than to get to court and loose. Again, that is the attorneys judgement, but the expert involved is not doing a disservice when he tells an attorney that his client was wrong.
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