The Florida Supreme Court recently rejected a request for rehearing by the Code and Rules of Evidence Committee of The Florida Bar and Jacksonville attorneys Howard Coker and James Holland to reconsider whether it should adopt the Daubert standard for expert testimony admissibility. Daubert in Florida Florida is one of the states that until very […]

Johannes Lopez was convicted of multiple crimes by a Georgia jury. The crimes included “street gang terrorism” as well as more traditional counts of assault and firearms offenses. Lopez attempted to present expert evidence to counter the testimony of prosecution experts that Lopez committed gang-related crimes. The trial court excluded the testimony of the defense […]

After suffering injuries in a bicycle accident, Michael Sode sued the driver who allegedly caused the collision. He was required to undergo a medical examination at the defendant’s request. The  examination was performed by a doctor at the Orthopedic Center of South Florida. Sode attempted to subpoena the financial records of the Orthopedic Center. The […]

The murder trial of a man who has been charged in the death of a Chesterton bartender will be delayed for three weeks so that DNA testing can be conducted on a strand of hair that was found at the crime scene.  The Murder On April 19, 2017, 23-year-old bartender Nicole Gland was found stabbed […]

During a groundbreaking seven-week trial, the State of Oklahoma offered evidence that Johnson & Johnson fueled the state’s opioid crisis by engaging in a marketing strategy that encouraged addiction to pain medication. The state advanced the novel theory that aggressive marketing of an addictive drug caused a public nuisance. Two other companies, Purdue Pharma and […]

The Queen of Soul passed away almost a year ago, but a drama is ongoing as the courts determine how she intended to dispose of her estate. The Conflicting Wills When Aretha Franklin passed away in August 2018, her family believed that she hadn’t left a will.  However, in May 2019, her family found three […]

Psychologists who study perception and memory have long understood that eyewitness identifications of criminal suspects are notoriously unreliable. Unfortunately, jurors do not understand the scientific basis for mistaken eyewitness identifications unless they are educated by expert witnesses. In the past, prosecution-friendly judges were inclined to disallow expert testimony with the dismissive observation that jurors already […]

A Postal Service employee needed, and was given, a parking spot that allowed him to load and unload his wheelchair from his van. Remarkably, the Postal Service took away that spot and failed to replace it with one that was suitable for a wheelchair. The Rehabilitation Act is a federal law that protects federal employees […]