Case: Whose Witness?

Whose Witness?

You are an engineer who is well known as an expert witness. Returning to your office after lunch, you find two phone messages on your answering machine. The first is from an attorney who wants to hire your services as an expert witness on behalf of a reclusive inventor who claims to have developed a system which operates in a cycle and delivers 1,000 Btu during each complete cycle, while consuming 320 Btu per cycle.

The second message is from a prosecutor who wants to hire you as an expert witness in pursuing a case against the same inventor for allegedly defrauding investors with the invention described by the attorney in the first phone message.

Questions:
1. Whose expert witness would you prefer to be? Why?
2. Which call will you return first? Why?
3. In deciding which, if either, caller to favor as expert witness, what kinds of questions will you ask yourself? What ethical questions, if any, will you ask?

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