Peer Dialogue: The Quagmire of Scientific Expert Testimony: Crumping the Supreme Court\u27s Style

the Article argues in support of Professor Crump\u27s critique of the Supreme Court of the United States\u27s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Kumho Tire Co v. Carmichael. Judges are unsuited to the task of evaluating scientific inquiry and should refrain from trying to do so. When evaluating the admissibility of evidence, the courts should use a logical relevance test

Managing the Unmanageable: A Brief Accounting of a Special Master’s Thirty Years of Experience in Complex Litigation

Managing an efficient, but fair, pretrial process in a large and complex case has always been a challenge. With the advent of electronic communications and the corresponding explosion of privilege claims, this challenge has become significantly more difficult. Indeed, it is not uncommon for corporate parties to assert tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of privilege claims. Furthermore, the resolution of these privilege questions is often compounded by difficult choice of law questions that can have the result of different substantive principles being applied to identical discovery demands originating in different jurisdictions. Additionally, before addressing the increasingly voluminous and complicated privilege question, many parties often raise other discovery issues that must be resolved before depositions and document production can proceed in a meaningful fashion. With this increase in the numbers of claims, the privilege resolution process has become significantly more costly. The initial costs in locating documents, assessing their privilege character, preparing privilege logs, and developing evidence to substantiate each claim can be overwhelming. Compounding this effort is metadata underlying most electronic documents that may also contain privileged materials. These enormous costs are further increased when special masters must be appointed to examine the millions of pages of materials that active judges have neither the time nor the paralegal resources to coordinate, review, and individually rule upon. Through these experiences as a judicial officer over the past thirty years, a number of novel procedures have been employed that proved to be effective case management tools. They saved valuable time and avoided unnecessary expenses while still accommodating the needs of the litigants in preparing their cases for trial on an expedited basis. Therefore, I offer a brief accounting of these procedures and processes in the hope that others might benefit from those experiences

Managing the Unmanageable: A Brief Accounting of a Special Master’s Thirty Years of Experience in Complex Litigation

Managing an efficient, but fair, pretrial process in a large and complex case has always been a challenge. With the advent of electronic communications and the corresponding explosion of privilege claims, this challenge has become significantly more difficult. Indeed, it is not uncommon for corporate parties to assert tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of privilege claims. Furthermore, the resolution of these privilege questions is often compounded by difficult choice of law questions that can have the result of different substantive principles being applied to identical discovery demands originating in different jurisdictions. Additionally, before addressing the increasingly voluminous and complicated privilege question, many parties often raise other discovery issues that must be resolved before depositions and document production can proceed in a meaningful fashion. With this increase in the numbers of claims, the privilege resolution process has become significantly more costly. The initial costs in locating documents, assessing their privilege character, preparing privilege logs, and developing evidence to substantiate each claim can be overwhelming. Compounding this effort is metadata underlying most electronic documents that may also contain privileged materials. These enormous costs are further increased when special masters must be appointed to examine the millions of pages of materials that active judges have neither the time nor the paralegal resources to coordinate, review, and individually rule upon. Through these experiences as a judicial officer over the past thirty years, a number of novel procedures have been employed that proved to be effective case management tools. They saved valuable time and avoided unnecessary expenses while still accommodating the needs of the litigants in preparing their cases for trial on an expedited basis. Therefore, I offer a brief accounting of these procedures and processes in the hope that others might benefit from those experiences

Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and the Relationship Between Respiration and Feeding

Objective: The primary purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between respiratory status and feeding difficulties in infants with NAS in comparison to full-term infants with no exposure to opioids. Methods: A group of infants with NAS (262) were compared to a group of full-term infants with no exposure to opioids (279). These groups were further divided into feeding and respiratory groups based on severity. These groups were analyzed for differences in behavior and outcomes. Results: Infants with NAS are 34.23 times more likely to develop respiratory distress and 111.03 times more likely to develop severe feeding difficulty. For infants with NAS, respiratory and feeding impairment may occur in isolation, suggesting a different withdrawal-based etiology of impairment as compared to premature infants. Conclusion: This study is unique in its size, scope, and attention to the respiratory factors involved in the feeding outcomes of infants with NAS