Although in our 2010 Medical Legal survey we found a surprisingly minimal awareness by members of available services and resources relating to expert witnesses, there is actually a wealth of information at www.acep.org, including several comprehensive articles previously published in ACEP News on the topic. One of the most important resources is the ACEP Expert Witness Guidelines.

If you seek a very comprehensive EM article on the topic, you may wish to consult one by this author. “Opinion for Sale: Confessions of an Expert Witness” illustrates how seductive the role of an expert can be, and how “success” as an expert perpetuates a lucrative sideline, while honesty and objectivity may truncate this line of business. The most comprehensive and interesting article I have ever read on the entire subject of why and how physicians become expert witnesses and the many pitfalls to be faced is called “Expert Evidence” in the Wisconsin Law Review by professor Samuel R. Gross.

Like most law review articles, it is not for the faint of heart. But this excellent article explains in great depth why it is that certain physicians are drawn to the expert witness role, but how they are often co-opted into becoming advocates for one side while forgetting that their legal role is to be a neutral educator of the court.

Says Gross: “To put it bluntly, in many professions, service as an expert witness is not generally considered honest work. Experts in other fields see lawyers as unprincipled manipulators of their disciplines, and lawyers and experts alike see expert witnesses – those members of other learned professions who will consort with lawyers – as whores. The best that anyone has to say about this system is that it is not as bad as it seems, and that other methods may be worse.”

It may sound as if I am vilifying the expert witness role in medical malpractice. I am not. I served as an expert witness in a number of cases during the height of my career. I have taught many groups the principles of being an ethical expert. I even ran an organization of physicians and attorneys who were interested in improving the legal system by helping to educate would be experts and to expose “testiliars.” I firmly believe that if we are to help the legal system, however flawed, to function more effectively, that physicians in good standing have an obligation to serve the courts as medical experts.