ABSTRACT
Some trial attorneys tell jurors that a trial is like assembling pieces of a puzzle. If that analogy is true, then a good expert witness should be like the picture on the puzzle’s box. No one likes hearing about the “battle of experts.” After all, the law should be based on facts not opinions, right? But in reality, the typical juror often does not have the background or training necessary to understand the importance and relevance of many of the facts presented to them in a highly technical case. This is especially true in carbon monoxide (CO) litigation. Terms like “carboxyhemoglobin”, “523 ppm” and “lateralized cerebral dysfunction” can be critical pieces of the puzzle, but are useless to a jury unless they are educated about their meaning and place in the case. So, like the picture on a puzzle box, the expert witness takes those complicated pieces and helps the jury understand how they fit in and where they go, so the image of what happened begins to make sense.
