MAY 8, 2019
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
4:00 PM (1.0 PDH)

WORKSHOP
4:00 PM (1.0 PDH)

Title : When Experts Are Heros: Providing Genuine assistance to the Judicial Process and Exceptional Value to Their Clients

Speaker : Mr. Jim Smith, Attorney w/ Crain, Caton & James

Jim Smith is a Shareholder with Crain, Caton & James, P.C. in Houston, Texas. His practice combines extensive trial and appellate work with a breadth of knowledge of state and federal environmental programs. First chair trial experience includes civil and criminal jury trials, as well as trials to courts, arbitrators, and administrative agencies (especially the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the United States Environmental Protection Agency). He has been lead counsel in numerous appeals, including important precedent setting environmental cases before the Texas Supreme Court, several Texas Courts of Appeals, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He has been selected as an arbitrator in multiple cases. Along with an extensive litigation practice, clients rely on his substantive knowledge of the environmental programs in support of complex transactions, and in compliance counseling involving every major environmental program. Environmental cases make up most of his trial and appellate experience, but first chair experience also includes intellectual property, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, and engineering design cases. As with his environmental practice, these generally have involved the oil production, petroleum refining, petrochemical and power generation industries. Jim received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering in 1978 from the University of Kansas, where he was selected for Tau Beta Pi. After practicing engineering for a major energy company, Jim attended the University of Texas School of Law and graduated, with honors, in 1982.

ABSTRACT : This presentation will explore examples of expert witnesses being truly helpful to the truth seeking process, in pre-trial and at trial, and by doing so bringing exceptional value to their clients. It will discuss how experts ensure their opinions will be admissible at trial and how experts can assist in preventing opposing experts from giving opinions that fail to follow generally accepted methodology, fail to consider relevant data, or fail to rule out reasonably possible alternatives. The presentation will explore the multiple potential audiences for an experts work: the opposing party and its expert; the trial judge; the jury; and the appellate court.

Expert witnesses, forensic consultants, attorneys and others concerned with the use of expert witnesses in the court cases.