Surely keeping the jurors safely away from feeling misled is part of the job isn't it?
I've had little exposure to the legal system, but once 15 years or more ago, my wife had a contract job as an expert witness. Out of the blue, some lawyer contacted her because a long running lawsuit in our area (eastern OR) was clunking towards a trial, and the expert witness they had been using was from TX, and IIRC had actually retired. Plus they wanted some additional work done. So after signing some contract documents, they sent over a packet of material on the history of the case and prior work done on it. The lawyer of course couldn't tell us what he wanted, but he could hint. The hints were mostly along the lines that they were always looking for expert witnesses, and that more work might be had for the right person.
Well, my wife looked it over, we talked about it, and devised a pretty simple and direct method to do some tests, which came out most clearly and beautifully in favor of the other side. She wrote it all up, sent it off, got paid, and never heard from them again.
I wasn't surprised
We did several years later hear that the case had settled out of court, but don't know the terms, which were kept confidential. |
