Role of an Expert Witness

Answer:

I’m often asked about what is one of the big expenses in a case: expert witnesses. My clients say, well, why do we have to have expert witnesses in a case? I don’t put a lot of dependence in my cases on an expert witness. For instance, I like to have other lay witnesses, people that know the client and know the change in the client’s life. Those are the important witnesses in my mind. Under Wyoming law, I also have to have an expert that’s going to testify as to the brain injury from a medical standpoint. Otherwise, you can’t get to trial. It would be thrown out of the court. You have to have that expert witness to go that extra mile.

The expert witness has to be somebody that’s willing to say that he takes these kinds of cases. He or she takes these kinds of cases because they want the system to be better. They want people like you to recover. That way, the system is made honest, and people that caused the injury are made to bear the burden of that injury, not walk away and leave it on the taxpayers to pay for later. That’s the kind of reason that we have experts. They are expensive. We bear the burden of those expert witnesses, and we take the chance that if we don’t recover on your behalf we have to absorb that cost. We pay all the expenses of the case, and we take all the risk in the case. If you have other questions like this, please feel free to call me or call my office here in Cheyenne, Wyoming.