Yeah, it sounds like something the opposition's lawyer should try to prevent being accepted as expert witness testimony. I'm not a lawyer, but I have seen "My Cousin Vinny" so I understand that there are procedures for doing this.

On the other hand, maybe the opposition's lawyer wasn't able to prevent the witness from being accepted as an expert because the witness actually was an expert and ought to have been accepted as an expert, in spite of not being a doctor. Maybe she was a professor of pharmacology or something. Thus she could justifiably claim to say with expertise "X drug would be very likely to kill a patient of type T and should not be prescribed to them." But this sounds a lot like medical advice (I mean, a person with condition T who heard the testimony might decide not to take drug X), even though it isn't. It's expert witness testimony.

We try to prevent people from giving medical advice without a license because medical advice tends to be given in private to people who tend to trust it implictly and will thus suffer the consequences of it being dangerously wrong. When medical advice is given in public in front of a hostile enemy lawyer, this is less of a concern.

Having been through a jury trial for patent infringement, I saw nothing of the sort. My company was defending, and the plaintiffs dismissed every juror who had anything more than a high school degree. They were incapable of understanding any nuance in the engineering or math, and so they sided for the home team (the plaintiffs managed to get jurisdiction in their home town).

If you like, call it sour grapes because my company was on the losing side, but I think the majority of jurors are completely unequipped to understand basic science, mathematics, engineering, software, medicine, or technology.

Being a paid expert witness is different than “expressing your opinion.” It’s one thing to be subpoenaed and compelled to testify and another to swear and speak authoritatively. Expert testimony “opinion” could result in people going to jail, or in this case paying large sums of money.

I imagine a case of medical malpractice where an unlicensed doctor was expertly testifying as to the proper procedure. That seems inappropriate.

Courts can call experts to testify on matters requiring specialized knowledge or expertise.

Isn't a lawyer supposed to argue on behalf of their client and not necessarily their personal beliefs? Sure, sometimes they align, but I've heard some pretty crazy things come out of a lawyer's mouth in whatever they need to provide the full throated legal argument for their client (even if it's not the best legal argument)

Your problem appears to be that you had a biased jury rather than a comment for trials by jury in general

Thank you for the ad-hominem attacks. Usually these come when the interlocutor has little left to say of merit.

> A qualified defense must be made by someone with requisite legal knowledge.

And the key part of this statement is the mystical belief that requisite legal knowledge is something intangible to the case and which defies normal logic. So you'll accept a guy working in a patent office solving a difficult problem in physics, but heaven forbid he should feel qualified to represent himself in court.

>it is assumed throughout that you will have knowledge of legal concepts that aren't contained in those documents.

More mysticism?

You would be surprised how many lawyers I've talked to that would have failed out of a first semester course on formal logic.

>advance wildly incorrect theories due to lack of foundational knowledge, end up wasting vast amounts of the court's time at taxpayer expense, and then bitterly complain that the judge didn't follow the law when they lose

Actually I have had the occasion to defend myself in court. For what it's worth it took me three court appearances, because the prosecutor was completely oblivious to how groundless the case was; thus happily wasting three days of my economic productivity (which cost more than the fine would have) as well as tax payer money.

My feelings are mostly that $50,000 is a lot of money, no matter how one slices it.

> but it's not an urban legend, it's real legal advice I heard from real lawyers.

What I was trying unsuccessfully to convey is that what a company might do as a legal tactic is not necessarily a legal necessity. I was a shitty law student before I dropped out of it, but I did learn that taking advice from people in a bar, or from Uncle Frank who heard it from TV, or HN for that matter, is a chancy business.

I generally agree that it is always worth knowing that lawyers specialise and that it's no crime to ask for a specialist.

We're talking about someone who's job is to persuade people for a living. Why would you doubt the deliberateness of their speech?

Then they're a crap defense.

They find an expert witness -- an IT witness in this case -- for their side to explain how the software might make errors, how no software is perfect, etc. Having opposing expert witnesses, one for prosecution and one for defense, is standard.

Lawyers don't need to be domain experts in every, or even most, cases they take on. They do need to find experts though.

You have a lot more trust in the ethics of expert witnesses than I do.

well, I'm a layperson and I would not interpret it that way. Suing someone is taking a gamble, and that gamble does not necessarily pay off. In this particular case the 'high likeihood of winning said suit' is not all that high.

> We all know what the parent meant.

You only speak for yourself and you definitely do not speak for me.

The linked article makes it sound as if the accusation was entirely due to a bad diagnosis of a medical condition, which was easily contradicted by standard medical tests/imaging that was available to the hospital staff.

But make no mistake, a $250mil judgement has nothing to do with the significance of judgement, and everything to do with juries that make up ridiculous amounts which are later reduced on appeal.

I suspect this means to function as a (voluntary) expert witness, not as someone formally required to testify.

Because they are very expensive and most regular people don't have money for them? Because public defenders have a few minutes to look over a case and don't have time or resources to bother with this level of care? Which of the two are caused by hubris?

So as the alternative you’d prefer only having the latter?

> I had to agree to it before I knew the terms of it

I strongly doubt you did, though I do not suspect that this was the suggested. Did your attorney confirm this?

I suppose you can't; not definitively. I find it very hard to tell whether someone brighter than me is only a little brighter than me, or dramatically brighter than me.

My heuristics are:

* Nobody is dramatically brighter than me; I don't believe in geniuses.

* Bullshit is a giveaway. If I detect bullshit (e.g. "word salad"), then he's not brighter than me.

[Edit] In my experience, barristers/courtroom attorneys tend to be very bright, and also very good with language. Language is "what they do". Word salad doesn't seem to me to be a good strategy, when facing a good lawyer.

That sounds reasonable.

> If he had hired a good lawyer, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be seeing him doing interviews

People who hire good lawyers don't do interviews? That's some stretch.

Because it was a win, and a sure $787.5M is better than a gamble that the court would find for them on the elements other than falsity (very likely) and find enough more damages than 787.5M to justify the added time and cost (far less certain). And the court had already found for them as a matter of law on falsity, so there was no real moral vindication to be sought at trial.