An expert witness should not provide expert medical testimony that is false, misleading, or without medical foundation. This is fairly self-explanatory, but it is possible to give false or misleading testimony if all details about a case are not known by the physician prior to offering an expert opinion or testimony. Not all attorneys provide all records, depositions, and supporting material such as imaging studies to a reviewing expert because of the time and expense involved.

The key to fulfilling this obligation is a thorough review of all available and appropriate medical records and contemporaneous literature concerning the case being examined, even if such is not initially provided by the attorney seeking review. A secondary obligation is the obligation to revise an opinion, even as late as at trial, if newly uncovered evidence leads the expert to an opposing view.

A medical expert’s opinion should reflect the state of medical knowledge at the time of the event giving rise to the case, which may have occurred some years prior to the trial of a claim, especially in pediatric cases where there is an extended statute of limitations. So a physician who, for example, was still an undergraduate during the event which gave rise to a case, would not under our guidelines be qualified to testify.

The expert witness should review the medical facts in a thorough, fair, and objective manner and should not exclude any relevant information to create a view favoring either the plaintiff or the defendant.

This goes back to a previous requirement regarding truthfulness, but also refers to the fact that a physician can be misled to favor one party or the other when not provided with all the details in a case. A related point is that a witness can be unwittingly led towards a certain conclusion before reviewing any materials in a case, as for example when the consulting attorney describes his or her own theory upon initial contact with a prospective witness.

Ideally, when a physician is contacted by an attorney with a potential case to review, the physician should interrupt almost immediately and ask the attorney not to reveal anything about the case except that which is necessary to nsure emergency medicine is the appropriate expertise required and that there is no conflict of interest. So, the physician should ask, “What type of specialist is the defendant whose care you are asking me to evaluate, who are the parties to the case, who are the attorneys involved, how much material is currently accumulated, and what is your deadline for review? That is all that I want to know at this point.”