How To Verify An Expert’s Credentials
Experts, sad to say, are not always honest about their credentials, as several recent news items confirm. Knowing how to verify the background of an expert whether yours or your opponent’s could prove critical to your case.
In perhaps the most dramatic recent example, a New Orleans federal judge threw out a jury verdict in favor of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. after a cardiologist who testified for the defense in a Vioxx trial was found to have misrepresented his credentials.
A few weeks earlier in California, a man who fraudulently passed himself off as a computer forensics expert in two cases pleaded guilty to federal perjury charges. In Toronto, a psychiatrist had his license
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These cases illustrate why it is crucial for trial lawyers to confirm that an expert is all he claims to be. Vetting an expert’s credentials should be a key step in your trial preparation.
Major legal research services provide many tools for checking an expert’s background, from public records databases to deposition banks. But these major services can be expensive to use and still leave bases uncovered.
At the same time, the Web harbors a variety of resources and tools that contain potentially valuable information but that many lawyers overlook in researching an expert’s background.
Yes, we all now know to check Google, but this
...Billy Joel's official message board. That might be her! If All Else Fails There are specific people search engines available. These usually search public records. For the most powerful ones, you'll have to pay for real contact information. You can ...
WORDS CAN HAUNT YOU
The old adage, “What you say may come back to haunt you,” has never been more true. With millions of people posting to blogs and participating in Internet discussion groups, we are creating permanent records of our words and thoughts like it or not.
In light of this, the blogosphere should be among your first stops in researching an expert’s background. Does the expert maintain a blog? If so, has he said anything
...etymology (history and definition) of an already existing title. Here are a few of the top sites, those that students, parents, and the curious swear by: Behindthename.com covers etymology of first names of numerous ethnic origins. While Behind the Names ...
The best tool for searching blogs is Google Blog Search at http://blogsearch.google.com. Like Google’s Web search, it is comprehensive and up to date. You can sort results by date or relevance, and you can search blogs in multiple languages.
A close second for searching blogs is Clusty at http://blogs.clusty.com. Clusty is not a search engine it does not crawl or index the Web. Rather, it is a metasearch tool that calls on other blog search engines, extracts the relevant information, and then organizes the results into a hierarchical folder structure which it calls
...search engine and therefore will put a limit on results. Morman Genealogy research can be completed through thorough research. It is easy to find a site which links to the majority of the Morman surname data on the web, as ...
Another source of potentially damaging comments by or about an expert is the Internet’s many news groups and discussion lists. To find postings someone made to one of these, search Google Groups at http://groups.google.com. It hosts a variety of current groups as well as an archive of more than 750 million Usenet postings dating back to 1985.
As podcasts become more popular, they also should be included in a background search. Perhaps the person you are researching said something pertinent in a podcast or was the subject of someone else’s podcast comment. Several sites claim to search podcasts, but most of these actually search only
...still should talk to as many relatives as possible to get clues to your genealogy. Oral histories can give you information that no DNA test or records search will offer. Oral histories, along with giving you information to then research ...
A handful of tools now enable you to search the full spoken text of podcasts. One of the best is Podzinger at www.podzinger.com. It is based on speech-recognition technology developed for U.S. intelligence to monitor foreign television and radio broadcasts. It uses this technology to create a textual index of the audio data in any MP3 or WAV file, converting the spoken words into searchable text.
NETWORKING SITES
Where professionals once networked at cocktail parties and civic events, today you are more likely to find them connecting through any of a number of networking Web sites. The most popular at the
...walls of Jerusalem (Ezra 9:9). Adding one year for passing from B.C. to A.D. brings us to A.D. 27, an accurate date for when Jesus began his ministry. Perhaps the wise men had done the math for themselves. God received ...
Other business networking sites include Ziggs at www.ziggs.com, Ryze at www.ryze.com, and Orkut at www.orkut.com. Of course, be sure also to check personal networking sites such as MySpace at www.myspace.com and Facebook at www.facebook.com.
CORPORATE RECORDS
Anyone researching a publicly traded company would know to check the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR
...from a drop-down list of all the counties in that state. There are also many sites for cemeteries. These are different in the way that you will not receive the actual death record or the death certificate but you can ...
If the expert works in the securities industry, two databases worth checking are NASD BrokerCheck at www.nasd.com/InvestorInformation/InvestorProtection/NASDW_005882 which provides information on the professional backgrounds of current and former NASD-registered securities firms and brokers, and the National Futures Association’s Background Affiliation Status Information Center (BASIC) at www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet which does much the same for registered futures dealers.
HISTORICAL WEB
Web sites change over time. If your expert has a Web site, what
...are planning to delve deeper into the history of your family, your name, or your house, you'll have a variety of modern and up-to-date resources at your disposal, with some sites allowing you to search for information from British family ...
PUBLIC RECORDS
Any number of major research systems sell access to public records. These include LexisNexis at www.lexis.com, Westlaw at www.westlaw.com, ChoicePoint at www.choicepoint.net, and Accurint at www.accurint.com. But many public records are now available online for little or no cost. A variety of Web sites help direct you to these online sources of public records.
One of
...have to send in additional documents such as a signed release or driver's license to verify your identity. Many sites allow you to fax or mail these documents instead of transmitting them over the internet. Unfortunately, you can't get free ...
Other sites that provide directories of public records and information include:
Virtual Gumshoe at www.virtualgumshoe.com: A good collection of Web resources for public records research.
Public Records Online Directory at http://publicrecords.netronline.com: Links to state and municipal sites, with an emphasis on real
...ancestor you want. For those who are interested in genealogy, you can go as far back as you want. Creating a family tree that is as in-depth as that may require some investigation, interviewing of family members, and also research. ...
Merlin Information Sources at www.merlindata.com/industrylinks.html: Links to resources for finding public records and public information.
Black Book Online at www.blackbookonline.info: A free public records site targeted at private investigators, skip tracers, government investigators and others. Good collection of links and descriptions.
BRB Publications at www.brbpub.com: provides a fairly comprehensive, state-by-state list of free public records sites, as well as an index of national sites and another for Canada and U.S. territories.
SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS
Due to privacy concerns, it is difficult to find social security numbers on the Web these days. But you can easily verify that a number is valid and belongs to a living person. Enter a number in The SSN Validator at www.ssnvalidator.com and
...It may be possible to ascertain names of parents or descendants, previous addresses, information about previous marriages, siblings and many other details from them. Since they vary so widely, it is smart to request every record that you can for ...
PROFESSIONAL CREDENTIALS
To check a medical doctor’s license, DocFinder at www.docboard.org/docfinder.html provides a database of license information for participating states. For states not included in the DocFinder database, the site provides links to their own license look-up sites.
Most states now have sites for verifying a lawyer’s bar admission. In Massachusetts, for example, it is at http://massbbo.org/bbolookup.php. You can find these for other states through the state government Web site. A new site, Avvo at www.avvo.com rates lawyers
...best place to seek female names is in marriage records. Not all marriages were recorded, but marriage records should provide the full names of both partners. In addition, check cemetery records, as your female ancestor might never have married. Finally, ...
DOCKETS
Is your expert a party to pending litigation? To find out in federal court, check the U.S. Party/Case Index at http://pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov. This is a national index of parties and cases for U.S. district, bankruptcy and appellate courts. It is updated nightly. Use of it requires a PACER account. Not all federal courts participate, but the site includes a list of those that do not.
A service with much the same information that requires no account is Justia’s Federal District Court Filings & Dockets at http://dockets.justia.com. This free, searchable resource contains information on recently filed U.S. district court civil cases. The database includes cases filed since Jan. 1,
...types of genealogy software, and other types of resources, as well as make friends with many other people devoted to genealogy. What used to be a long process of sifting through old papers in file rooms has become a fast ...
Another low-cost option for searching federal court dockets is Who’s Suing Whom at www.tlc-i.com/texis/tmp/litcases3. A private translation and interpretation services firm offers this tool for searching patent, trademark or copyright cases pending in federal courts. Search by case type and party name, court, state or date to find basic case information. There is a charge to retrieve full-text court dockets.
VITAL RECORDS
Vital records birth, death and marriage certificates and divorce decrees are increasingly available free online through state and local government sources. Vital Records Information at www.vitalrec.com tells where to find them anywhere in the U.S. It lists sources for each state,
...arise with a male ancestor, but checking prison records, probate, military or school records might turn up the appropriate information on date of death. Family trees often require some guesswork and estimates to fill in blanks regarding areas where missing ...
EXPERT WITNESS RULINGS
The Daubert Tracker at www.dauberttracker.com is a Web site developed specifically to help lawyers track cases involving the admissibility of expert testimony and, in particular, find out how specific experts fared in the courts. Its central feature is a database of all reported cases under Daubert and its progeny, trial and appellate, backed up when available by full-text briefs, transcripts and docket entries. Part of what makes
...than paying a private investigator, but you will need to do your own research. Pricing normally ranges from $29 to $59 annually for unlimited access to the member's area.If you need to find someone's social security number, there are a ...
A year subscription is $295 or you can purchase a two-hour session for $25 or a half-hour for $10. For free, you can search the site’s collection of more than 10,000 briefs and other supporting documents from both appellate and trial courts relating to expert witness testimony. If you find a document you are interested in, you can also view the first 10 percent of it free. If you decide you want to purchase the complete document, the cost is $15 for non-subscribers and $7.50 for subscribers.
WRITINGS
In vetting an
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An increasingly popular resource for scholarly publications is the Social Science Research Network at www.ssrn.com. This international collaborative is home to scholarly research covering more than 400 subject areas. It contains abstracts of more than 150,000 working papers and the full text of well over 100,000 published papers. This makes SSRN
...list could have a thousand names and the only way to maximize it is by calculating how many people should be called on a daily and monthly basis. It is also possible that customers who say no now might be ...
Another useful source is ISI HighlyCited.com at www.isihighlycited.com. This site provides profiles and bibliographic information for the most highly cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories. For listed individuals, the site provides biographical information including education, faculty and professional posts, memberships and offices, current research interests and personal Web sites as well as a full listing of publications, including journal articles, books, and conference proceedings.
OTHER
The U.S. government maintains any number of databases that could be relevant to vetting an expert, depending on his field of expertise. One often worth checking is the Excluded Parties List System at www.epls.gov. It provides information on individuals and companies
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When it comes to checking someone’s background, more is better. The more sources you use, the more complete your search. The free and low-cost resources described here provide useful supplements to more expensive research services.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in BullsEye, a newsletter distributed by IMS Expert Services.
Robert Ambrogi is the editor of BullsEye, a monthly newsletter distributed by IMS Expert Services. IMS Expert Services is the premier expert witness and litigation consultant search firm in the legal industry, focused exclusively on providing custom expert witness searches to attorneys. To read this and other legal industry BullsEye publications, please visit IMS ExpertServices at http://www.ims-expertservices.com
...new item. A trick to check for this is to breathe on the piece. Since silver is generally colder than breath, the condensation will reveal the demarcation line of the soldering. Transposing marks was done in the 18th and 19th ...