Saturday, April 17, 2004

Addition of Virginia Expands Site's State Law Coverage to Six Jurisdictions

With today's addition of a correspondent from Virginia, we have now recruited volunteers to monitor state law decisions on expert evidence from six separate states, representing 14 per cent of the American population. Here is the roster of our state law collaborators as it now stands:

Alabama: Edward Still, the sagacious attorney known to many of you as the author of the indispensable Votelaw weblog.

Colorado: James England of the Boulder law firm Hutchinson, Black & Cook. Among his many other accomplishments, Jim is co-author of the Colorado version of Edward J. Imwinkelried's highly regarded Evidentiary Foundations treatise.

North Dakota: Leonard Bucklin, a veteran litigator who also frequently serves as an expert witness himself on legal malpractice issues, and who has written extensively on expert evidence and other subjects.

Texas: Jim Dedman, of Germer Gertz. After graduating from Baylor Law School in 2002, Jim served as a briefing attorney in the Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston, Texas. His observations on law, life, and culture (including his forays into screenplay writing) are chronicled at the always diverting jdedman.com.

Utah: John H. Bogart, of the Salt Lake City firm Bendinger, Crockett, Peterson, Greenwood & Casey. In addition to his accomplishments as a litigator, John boasts a Ph.D. in philosophy, and has taught that subject at the university level, besides having served as Adjunct Professor of Law at Loyola University School of Law.

Virginia: Finally, we are pleased to announce that Steven R. Minor, a principal of the Virginia law firm Elliott Lawson & Minor, has agreed to monitor Virginia state court decisions for the site. Many readers also know Steve from his excellent Southwest Virginia Law Blog. Update 4/19/04: Here is Steve Minor's take on Virginia's current posture on Daubert.
This leaves 44 states, comprising the remaining 86 per cent of the United States population, still up for grabs. All you need to do is keep up with your jurisdiction's appellate decisions on expert evidence and pass new developments along. Write to us if you're interested in helping out.
Fed. R. Evid. 702: If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.