Deposed an expert witness who couldn't explain his own report

Last Thursday I was in a deposition for a breach of contract case, and the other side's damages expert kept stumbling over basic math from his own spreadsheet. He said his report was correct but then admitted he hadn't actually looked at the invoices he was basing numbers on. The judge let out a sigh so loud I thought the ceiling tiles would fall. Has anyone else dealt with an expert who clearly phoned it in?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_jennifer1mo ago

Look, I get it’s frustrating when numbers don’t add up in the moment. But I’ve been on the other side of this where the lawyer was just grinding the expert down on tiny details that didn’t matter to the big picture. I had one case where my guy couldn’t instantly remember what year a specific invoice was from but he had the whole data set ready in his laptop. The other side made a big show of it and the judge just rolled their eyes at both of us. Sometimes the slow stumble in a deposition is more about nerves or bad prep on the attorney’s part than the expert being lazy lol.

james_martin931mo ago

Had a guy on the stand once who couldn't tell me what "net present value" meant even though his whole report was built around it. I'm no math whiz but you'd think an expert would at least know their own formulas. It's painful to watch someone collect a check without doing the basic legwork first.