One Expert Witness’ Battle with Financial Companies
Having played a role in winning millions of dollars for investors who sued financial companies, it is safe to say that expert witness, Craig McCann, is not one of many brokerage firms’ favorite people. For years, McCann, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange commission Economist, has given testimonies that have exposed the unlawful activity of many securities firms.
As an anonymous securities arbitration lawyer says,
“Most of these securities firms don’t like Craig because his testimony hurts them. They don’t want someone who can lift the tent to show people what’s underneath it. He’s Public Enemy No. One.”
Recently, however, in a case against brokerage Morgan Keegan & Co Inc., a federal judge ruled that McCann gave a fraudulent testimony against the firm.
“The fact that McCann disclosed the discrepancy ahead of time and that the new testimony would have done nothing to change the outcome of the case has not stopped lawyers from using the ruling to attack McCann’s integrity. McCann did not deny revising his figures but the discrepancy, which he says was “minor,” would have done no good for Morgan Keegan.”
Because the stakes are so high for these firms (and because McCann has such a deep knowledge of the assessment and risks of securities), the opposing lawyers often try to challenge his qualifications and credentials.
The incident with Morgan Keegan & Co Inc. launched a full-fledged war against McCann by brokerages. McCann says that he,
“…thought it was the worst day of my life.”
McCann had to lay off three employees and leave four positions vacant within his consulting firm due to the fallout of business as word traveled about the Morgan Keegan ruling.
As time has passed, however, McCann’s business is beginning to pick up once again.
“Despite the onslaught of efforts to discredit McCann since the federal finding, McCann has begun to see subtle victories. Most recent among them: a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panel denied a request by Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch unit to disqualify McCann after the brokerage’s lawyers raised concerns about the federal judge’s opinion.”
Regardless of McCann’s recent success, the ruling from the Morgan Keegan case will continue to haunt his record unless a new decision is made by the judge.
McCann prefers to look on the bright side, saying,
“While we’ve been seriously harmed by what’s happened, there’s no doubt we’ll succeed and prosper in the long run.”
If you have worked with Craig McCann in the past and would like to write a review on his work as an expert witness, please follow this link to his profile in Courtroom Insight’s Expert Witness Directory: Craig McCann’s Profile. If would like to write a review on a different expert witness, mediator or arbitrator, or judge, please visit our website here. To read the complete article in Reuters, please click here: Wall Street Fights Back Against Expert Witness in Lawsuits
Source: Barlyn, Suzanne. “Wall Street Fights Back Against Expert Witness in Lawsuits.” Reuters. February 14, 2012.
February 13, 2012
by Kim Harris
tags: Mediator, Arbitrator, Mediator/Arbitrator Directory
A Courtroom Insight user recently posted an extremely positive review of Mediator/Arbitrator, Alfred G. Chiantelli. Mr. Chiantelli is based in San Francisco and was hired as a mediator for a case involving claims for damage to work-in-process as well as lost business income due to a fire.
The reviewer, an expert witness in the case, awarded Mr. Chiantelli a 5.0 out of 5.0 rating for all qualities including legal ability, integrity and objectivity, and judicial management. The expert witness also commended the amount of time that Mr. Chiantelli devoted to preparing for the mediation, noting that the extra time was positively accounted for through his excellent work:
“Chiantelli spent several hours in the morning reviewing the facts and legal issues, particularly as identified in the mediation statements and related documentary evidence. While this effort seemed protracted, it paid dividends later in the day as Chiantelli demonstrated in-depth knowledge of the claims and was able to provide realistic assessments to the parties.”
According to the review, the case reached settlement just a few days after the scheduled mediation and this reviewer stated that he/she would recommend or hire Mr. Chiantelli in the future.
To read the complete review of Albert G. Chiantelli please click here.
If you have worked with any mediators or arbitrators lately, let us know how it went by posting your review in the mediator/arbitrator directory.
Featured Economic Damages Expert Witness
Name: George Fruehan
Company: Numbers Talk
Location: El Cerrito, CA
Specialty: Economic Damages Expert Witness
Overall Rating: N/A
Profile description provided by expert witness George Fruehan:
Expert testimony on economic damages and on technical issues. Analysis resulting in depositions and testimony in federal and state courts. Issues include: lost profits; valuation of contract damages; projections and historic studies of revenue and costs; patent, trademark and copyright damages; software valuation; disputes over hardware and software performance; investigation for fraud; forensic accounting; evaluation of appropriate personnel compensation and calculation of lost wages.
Mr. Fruehan is included in the expert witness directory as a lost profits expert witness who has over 25 years of experience. His prior experience includes:
Expert testimony in U.S. District Courts, state and local courts, arbitrations, and depositions. Courtroom expert testimony in California.
Be sure to check out Mr. Fruehan’s expert witness profile for more information:
Expert Witness Profile for George Fruehan
The New York Times recently published an article by sports-columnist, Richard Sandomir that contains a valuable lesson for attorneys when it comes to choosing expert witnesses. The article, entitled, “Expert Witnesses Faulted in Suit Against Mets’ Owners”, discusses the role that each side’s expert witness played in the standoff between victims of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme and the New York Mets’ owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz, as they prepare to go to trial. The Madoff trustee is suing Wilpon and Katz for 1 billion dollars, accusing them of benefiting from the falsified profits accumulated through the Ponzi scheme.
At the moment, however, what seems to be very crucial to this case are the expert witnesses from each side. As the article states,
The trustee’s lineup includes Harrison J. Goldin, a former New York City comptroller who faced ethical questions while in office. The Mets’ owners hired John Maine. No, not that John Maine, the sore-shouldered Mets right-hander whom the pitching coach Dan Warthen labeled a “habitual liar” during his last, injury-marred season with the team, in 2010. This John Maine graduated from Dartmouth with a history degree and worked as both a stockbroker and Smith Barney executive, but has not been directly involved in the financial sector since 1990. He now makes his living testifying at trials. As part of the new court filings, this Maine submitted a report supporting one of Wilpon and Katz’s bedrock defenses — that despite their real estate holdings, they are not sophisticated investors and had no reason to doubt, or investigate, Madoff while he was their trusted broker.
The trustee, Irving H. Picard, (after Maine’s credentials were presented) took the opportunity to attack Maine on his report, stating that he had,
…issued a report that lacked “any principle or methodology” and cited no “surveys, sources, books, treatises, industry guides, periodicals, studies or any other objective third-party analysis.”
Picard asserted that Maine is not qualified to make the statements or claims that he did because he is, in a sense, out of practice with the knowledge and expertise that comes with holding a full-time financial position.
Maine had been too long removed from a full-time financial post, and he even cited Maine’s failed attempt at running a trout farm. Picard contends that Maine’s work as a stockbroker and office executive in the 1970s and ’80s, and his “brief stint trying to raise trout,” were “outside the scope of the issues to be tried to the jury in this litigation.”
Although Maine’s resume listed over 1,000 expert witness retentions and 600 testimony appearances related to the securities industry, the plaintiff does not seem satisfied with the quality or reliability of his work. In contrast, the Mets’ lawyers were much nicer to the trustee’s expert witness.
Goldin wrote a report for Picard that stated that Wilpon and Katz did not carry out due diligence before offering employees at their holding company, Sterling Equities, an option to invest their retirement money with Madoff. Another Picard expert, Steve Pomerantz, who holds a doctorate in mathematics, cited 26 red flags that he said should have alerted Wilpon and Katz that something was, well, fishy during their many years of investing with Madoff. The Mets’ lawyers called their conclusions irrelevant and unfounded. But Goldin’s and Pomerantz’s credentials — and any fishing sidelights — were not questioned. The Mets had no comment on the case Friday or the factors that went into hiring Maine.
It is important for attorneys to verify the credentials of an expert witness before bringing them in to a case to ensure that the expert’s analysis is legitimate and justifiable. If, however, you are of the opinion that an expert witness, mediator or arbitrator is falsifying or exaggerating their CV, resume or credentials, Courtroom Insight encourages you to write a review on him or her so that others will have a reference when considering hiring them for a case. For more information on our review system, please visit Courtroom Insight’s website here. To read the complete New York Times article, please click here: Expert Witnesses Faulted in Suit Against Mets’ Owners
Source: Sandomir, Richard. “Expert Witnesses Faulted in Suit Against Mets’ Owners. The New York Times. January 27, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/sports/baseball/expert-witnesses-faulted-in-suit-against-mets-owners.html?_r=2
Case Against Credit Suisse Tossed Over Flawed Expert Witness Report
According to a recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton rejected a class-action complaint against Credit Suisse due to a flawed study by the plaintiff’s expert witness. The case, which was set to go to trial in March, was brought by individuals and a pension fund that alleged Credit Suisse issued misleading reports about AOL Time Warner. The reports purportedly included unattainable financial projections that deceived investors into buying AOL Time Warner stock.
In a January 13 ruling, Judge Gorton found expert witness, Scott Hakala, failure to
“isolate the effect of defendants’ alleged fraud from other industry- and company-specific news reported on event days confounds his event study and renders it unreliable.”
The dismissal is just another notable story-line in a saga that started over 10 years ago when the Securities and Exchange Commission began investing AOL’s accounting practices such as booking stock rights and bartered computer equipment as ad revenue.
Forensic accounting expert witnesses and fraud investigators should be sure to check out the case “Credit Suisse-AOL Securities Litigation, 02-12146, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts (Boston)” or read the complete Bloomberg Businessweek article.
Expert Witnesses Expected to Significantly Impact Oracle / Google Patent Litigation
A recent article in PC World highlights the key roles expert witnesses play in patent litigation. Experts: Oracle, Google Need to Focus on People as Well as Patents by Chris Kanaracus of IDG News discusses the difficulties with putting patent cases in front of jurors.
As Oracle’s claim against Google that Android violated a number of its patents and copyrights on Java moves closer to trial, experts and attorneys are weighing in on the difficulty of presenting complex patent drawings to jurors. Scott Daniels, a partner and intellectual-property attorney with the Washington, D.C., law firm Westerman, Hattori, Daniels and Adrian is quoted in the article as follows:
“Inevitably, [jurors] begin to see which expert they regard as trustworthy, and which lawyers they like, and so on,” Daniels said. “You really have to personify the technical issues and put some good-guy, bad-guy drama to the whole thing. Otherwise, it’s just a mash.”
The article goes on to say:
There are typically two kinds of expert witnesses in patent cases, according to Daniels. There’s the “college professor” type who brings communication skills well-honed by years of teaching to undergraduate students, and the “hands-on guy, who can deliver a knockout punch for you at the right moment,” he said. Oracle vs. Google will probably feature more of the former, Daniels said.
It will be interesting to see how attorneys for Oracle and Google choose to present their intellectual property witnesses. While the trial date has not yet been set, this is definitely a case to keep an eye on!
Read the complete article at www.pcworld.com: Experts: Oracle, Google Need to Focus on People as Well as Patents by Chris Kanaracus of IDG News
Notable Ohio Supreme Court Decision Requires Medical Expert Witness Testimony In Lack of Informed Consent Claims Against Physicians
Last month the Supreme Court of Ohio overturned a controversial appeals court ruling regarding expert witnesses in cases where patients sue doctors over lack of informed consent. As noted in an article posted at American Medical News (amednews.com), the court stated in its decision:
“The cause of action for a physician’s failure to obtain informed consent is a medical claim, and a patient bears the burden to present expert medical testimony identifying the material risks and dangers of the medical procedure and showing that one or more of those undisclosed risks and dangers materialized and proximately caused injury. Expert testimony is necessary because these elements of the tort require the knowledge, training and experience of a medical expert to assist the jury in rendering its verdict.”
According to Bret C. Perry, an attorney for the Academy of Medicine of Cleveland & Northern Ohio, this landmark decision will likely strengthen tort reform protections and prevent more lawsuits against physicians.
For a more detailed look at the case decision, visit amednews.com.
Or access the complete decision at Robert White v. Warren Leimbach II, MD, Supreme Court of Ohio, Dec. 8, 2011.
Featured Florida Addiction Medicine Expert Witness
Name: Arnie Wexler
Company: Arnie and Sheila Wexler Assoc.
Location: Lake Worth, FL
Specialty: Addiction Medicine
Overall Rating: N/A
Profile description provided by expert: “Arnie Wexler is a certified compulsive gambling counselor (CCGC) and was the Executive Director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey for eight years. Arnie is one of the foremost experts on the subject of compulsive gambling, and has been involved in helping compulsive gamblers for over 43 years. He has appeared on many of America’s top television show, including Oprah, Nightline and 48 Hours. He has been quoted and profiled in hundreds of magazines and newspapers. “
Mr. Wexler is listed in the expert witness directory as an addiction medicine expert witness with 36 years of experience providing depositions and expert testimony in both State and Federal Courts. He has been quoted and profiled in numerous newspapers and magazines including:
Time magazine, Psychology Today, New Jersey reporter, Financial World Magazine, Sports Illustrated, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Ladies Home Journal, NJ Law Journal, Casino Gaming Magazine, US Journal, Gaming & Wagering Business, POKER BIZ, Professional Counselor, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, L.A. Times, Glamour, and Newsweek
Be sure to check out Mr. Wexlers’ expert witness profile for more information including links to his website and full CV:
