First, I'm not a lawyer and I'm not qualified to give legal advice. What follows is simply common sense.
If you're a plaintiff's lawyer about to square off with the law firm of Smith, Smith and Col. Klink (apparently they also make stunguns), then you need to take proactive steps to short circuit (preempt) the legal tricks used by them. Such as the world-famous Daubert motion.
Call a conference with the court, in the Judge's Chamber, well in advance, and get this matter of "expert" witnesses on the table.
Refer to the AMA conclusion that tasers can cause death, "directly or indirectly". Mention the Canadian $4M Braidwood Inquiry. Note that Kroll, Ho, and even Bozeman (!) are on a list of those that have accepted compensation from Taser International. Read some of Bozeman's more candid quotations. Mention that the Maryland AG found that Taser International has "significantly" understated the risks of taser use.
Contact me (e-mail address in right column) if you need pointers to previous posts and sources.
Frankly, if I read about one more Taser International Daubert motion being accepted by a court, given all the opportunity to preempt it using easily-available hard evidence, then it would be close to legal malpractice by the lawyer that failed to preempt it. It's not that complicated.
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Judging by the direct blog hits and related 3rd party to 3rd party e-mail traffic (that leaves explicit Internet clues), this post appears to be a very popular topic.
Hopefully that implies that Daubert motions have run their course.
Still, be careful of their next trick. Whatever that might be...
If you really feel that you have a legal strategy to foil the Taser International Standard Legal Defense - [Overwhelm and Confuse opposing legal counsel with 1000's of pages of Junk Science]- , you might want to contact the Taser Litigation Group in Washington DC at the American Association of Justice, which issued a packet entitled "New Update! Tasers: Unsafe and Lethal [September 2009; 1,965 pages]"
http://www.justice.org/cps/rde/xchg/justice/hs.xsl/1150.htm
I believe that Litigation Group is headed by Ft. Worth TX attorney R. Haslam, - http://www.haslamgallagher.com/robert_Haslam_vitae.html - who was quoted in 2008 in this taser story:
http://www.sanangelolive.com/node/3562
He is not the head of the "AHA" taser litigation group, as the story says, since, unfortunately..., the American Heart Association has no "litigation groups". I think they meant the AAJ.
Happy New Year!
CM
I have already contacted a litigation group going after Taser International, but I think it was another one...
That's always been a prime purpose of the blog. I'm certainly not an expert, but there are plenty of ideas that could be followed up, including some that I've termed "smoking guns" that (if confirmed) would be the end...
Happy New year.
Don't sell yourself short ~ I suspect, from your thorough and well-reasoned discussion and dissection of the issues involved in the "Taser Story", that you would pass any "bar" which lawyers are required to pass, should you pursue a legal career.
It would be a very satisfying career opportunity to be able to earn a living as a "taser para-legal" for one of the Litigation Groups, and strip both the company and its founders of their ill-gotten gains, as well as their ability to continue to promote and profit from the production of an electro-torture-&-death-device.
There is a "shocking" parallel between the slow realization of both the legal and medical community that "tasers kill", and the tobacco litigation story. In the early days of cigarette promotion, advertisements for tobacco products featured medical doctors promoting smoking, just as early stun-gun promotion does.
It is only a matter of time before the medical community realizes that stun guns have, and continue to cause death.
CM
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