Hi, today we’re going to talk about “expert witnesses” the good, the bad, and the ugly.

My name is Bob Snyder, I’m a trial lawyer handling personal injury cases in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and throughout the country. I’ve come in contact with many people who are holding themselves out as expert witnesses. Some are pretty good. An expert witness is one that is knowledgeable about a specific area that the general population doesn’t know very much about (medicine, engineering or some other area of science) in order to be able to state an opinion in testimony.

Otherwise, opinion testimony is not accepted in courts.

The problem that we have is this: honest opinions are most often found by honest people who are treating physicians in cases involving accidents and insurance companies.

The insurance companies hire doctors who are (let’s say) not quite as honest as they should be. They go so far as to have doctors travel five or six states away to come in and give an excuse as why the accident didn’t cause the injury that you claim. Your client is having psychiatric problems instead of physical problems and it’s all in her head. And they will even get more ridiculous than that.

Some of these cases involve big stakes and in all cases that go to court they are important to the client. You want to have the best experts that you can and the other side just wants to have the best experts they can afford. And, an insurance company will pay five to ten thousands dollars a day to have a doctor or engineer come in and lie through his teeth in an attempt to win a case rather than pay a claim in a fair settlement.

Call us at (610)265-8050 members of the Snyder Law Group will be happy to answer your questions.