Scale factors and fractions stump an 'expert' witness.

I just had to share this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2X52rS-ZLE
I think the other lawyer needs a better professional witness, but maybe this 'expert' is all the lawyer could afford.

Wow, bummer for him. It's funny how he attempts to calculate it, and then refuses.

I like how he throws in "how I was trained". Now he's blaming his lack of understanding to "how I was trained". He is supposed to be an expert, but does not even understand the most basic of mathematics.

When he describes what his company does, "mathematically recreates accidents". I would think that being a mathematician would be key in this field, yet he says "I'm no mathematician; this is the way I've been trained". If he can't even understand even the most basic of mathematic "calculations", then how can anyone expect him to understand physics.

dmroeder said:

Wow, bummer for him. It's funny how he attempts to calculate it, and then refuses.

I like how he throws in "how I was trained". Now he's blaming his lack of understanding to "how I was trained". He is supposed to be an expert, but does not even understand the most basic of mathematics.

When he describes what his company does, "mathematically recreates accidents". I would think that being a mathematician would be key in this field, yet he says "I'm no mathematician; this is the way I've been trained". If he can't even understand even the most basic of mathematic "calculations", then how can anyone expect him to understand physics.

Click to expand...

I kept wishing the lawyer had asked him if he
A had been trained to calculate the sum of 1 and 1.
B needed a calc sheet to do it.

Of course in this age and day of homeland security, liability, product tampering, food safety, and other normal rational concerns elevated to paranoias maybe he was scared of not having the documentation.

Dan Bentler

Wow, that's pretty pathetic.
I wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm really not.

At least the lawyer had the patience to pin him down on it.

Hmmm. I say the lawyer ended up letting him get his reference sheets. A 3-3/16" arc on a 1:20 scale comes to 63'9", not "approx. 68 feet" as the "expert" says. Easy to see where the lawyer is going with this line of questioning...

a possible explanation

The "expert" knew or suspected that 68 feet was wrong and so decided to stonewall and leave himself latitude to blame the "formula sheets" or perhaps their misuse by some hapless employee.

He shouldn't have even picked up the calculator if he was going to stonewall the lawyer. Had he done that, it would have almost looked believable. But he attempted to 'calculate' (and I use that term loosely in this case) it, then gave up.

I shared this around my office - it got quite a bit of laughter. Especially since there are so many engineers in the office.

Popular comments were "this guy was their expert witness?"

There are a lot of idiots involved in automotive liability litigation

I started to feel sorry for the guy after a bit. I can imagine being caught so far off guard and panicking so that you thought that converting 3/16 to decimal was a trick question. Or that it was going to be the first of a set of arithmetic that you'd have to solve under oath.

Maybe he's the lawyerly half of a forensics firm, and all he does is punch numbers into spreadsheets to generate his opinions for accidents. The opposing lawyer certainly seemed to be ready to tear into him, as though he knew that he had a weak point.

An example from early in my career:

Straight out of college, I worked for a company that made industrial mixers and agitators. They had some neat welding gear, and nifty chemical-proof seals, and we did all our CAD using Ashlar Vellum for Macintosh.

The root curves for the mixer blades were computed by a program that we just plunked numbers into. You entered the viscosity modulus of the fluid, and the horsepower you planned on putting on the shaft, and the blade material alloy and DING ! out popped a blade thickness and a curve radius.

I asked what sort of equations these were based on. "The numbers come out of the program".

But what equations had the program been based on ? "You see, you put the values into the program, and the curve number comes out."

Surely you must know what equations the designs that are the company's bread and butter are based on.

"Look, just punch the numbers into the program, would you, kid ?"

Related tale. I like these OT threads.

About seven years ago I was the jury foreman for the trial of a lawsuit arising from a low-speed auto accident with whiplash injuries. Long story made short, I found the plaintiff unsympathetic, her lawyer seedy, and the case extremely weak.

The last straw for me on the plaintiff's attorney was when he took an easel and paper and began to list the damages he was asking for. His writing was sloppy, and his notes obviously disorganized. He got to about $48,000 total in his column (we weren't allowed pencils and paper and I was trying to listen to him and add the numbers in my head). He stopped, stared hard at his notes for a moment, then slashed a line below the column of numbers, wrote "$ 130,000" and circled it twice.

He looked right at me, maybe remembering that I had disclosed my occupation during voir dire. And I'm sure he was glad I didn't have a pencil. During deliberations I asked for that paper and was told the jury couldn't have it. Ticked me off.

I don't feel so bad about giving up on a calculus problem a couple of threads ago.

Sad part is this "expert" probably makes more money than me (or did anyway).

The expert.....

I guess anyone can say they are professional....Ill bet this case wont make his pro resume.