Transcription:
I’m Gordon Culp. I’m a professional engineer with 50 years experience in water and waste water treatment. I’ve written, or co-authored, ten books and over 70 published papers. So sometimes, I get calls from an attorney looking for a water or wastewater treatment expert witness.
In a recent call, an attorney went over the facts of the case, at least as he saw them, and at that point asked, “What exactly can you do for us?” I thought that was a good question to address here.
First, if after this first brief description of the case, it looks like my expertise is not a great match, I’ll certainly say so. I’ve developed a pretty good network over the years of other experts with specialized expertise that I’ll refer the attorney to.
If it looks like it is a good match, I’ll start digging into the facts of the case. I’ll start to form my opinions. Before putting them in writing, I’ll talk to the attorney and see if it looks like my opinions are going to support their case.
If they view my opinions as not being particularly helpful to their case, I may be done. However, in some cases where I’m not retained as an expert witness, I’ve been retained later as a consultant.
If it looks like a good fit, I start developing more in-depth documentation supporting my opinions, and I’m often asked to prepare an expert report.
I provide further assistance by helping the attorney depose the corresponding expert witness on the other side of the case by preparing questions for the attorney to use during the deposition, and I’ll often sit in on the deposition.
I’m usually deposed myself. I’ve helped the attorneys in many cases negotiate or mediate the solution to the case without going to court.
If the case does go to court, I have testified in state court and federal court. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but every case that I’ve agreed to take on as an expert witness has had a favorable outcome for my client..
I certainly look forward to the opportunity to discuss the particulars of your case with you.