Tom's key questions about choosing an expert witness:


What is their actual purpose in our case?

A:  To give their professional opinion about the 5 pillars (our 5 smoking guns) and about general questions of standard of care.


But the reality is that pillars 2, 3, 4, and 5 are things the jurors do not need expert testimony to see that they are wrong.

An expert witness is completely useless with pillar 2 (hiding the timestamps).  Pillar 3 (leading witnesses in depositions) is directly related to hiding the timestamps.

In Pillar 3 (leading the defendents through interrogatories and depositions) it is impossible for anyone including an expert to see what Mast is doing unless they know about the hidden timestamps.

So it would be worse than useless to have an expert read and analyze the depositions unless they were aware of the hidden timestamps.


Pillar 4 (Oct 22 memo) does not require expertise to understand.  A Jury can easily understand it is wrong by themselves.

Pillar 5 (forged letter)  is the same.



So, in summary, in our case an expert witness is necessary to establish the appropriate 'standard of care' mainly on pillar 1 ($50,000 limit).  With all the other pillars they are there to point out the obvious.

Also, since in Illinois the appropriate standard of care is a question of fact, our expert witness has to establish what it is during the trial.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>


The only other outstanding question is 'the locality rule'.

The question becomes, can the defense argue that our particular expert witness is unable to establish the appropriate standard of care in this case due to their lack of experience in this region.

Does 'standard of care' depend on the region you are in in this particular case?

My guess is McHenry is considered part of the greater Chicagoland area and 'standard of care' will not vary in this or any large urban region.