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This paper aims to investigate factors which may influence or bias judges’ decisions to exclude or admit the testimony of accounting expert witnesses, under the US judicial guidelines commonly known as the Daubert/Kuhmo standards. Accounting experts are increasingly providing expert testimony as a part of financial litigation support services.

Judges’ decisions, in which opposing council evoked a Daubert/Kuhmo challenge to the testimony provided by 130 professional accountants serving as expert witnesses, were analyzed. The period of study was 2010 through 2014. Based on prior research, three variables believed to potentially influence or bias judges to systematically exclude expert testimony were examined: gender, complexity and familiarity.

The results of binary logistic regression show that none of the variables has a significant relationship to the accounting expert witnesses’ probability of surviving a challenge to Daubert/Kuhmo standards. Findings suggest that judges are objective in evaluating the testimony provided by accounting experts under Daubert/Kuhmo guidelines and that they may be immune to biases based solely on gender, complexity and familiarity.

These results will be of interest to judges, lawyers and forensic accountants acting as expert witnesses.

In 2009, the Third Circuit decided Hydrogen Peroxide, which announced a more rigorous standard under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(3) for assessing whether a putative class could establish antitrust injury. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court decided Comcast v. Behrend, a case that carries potentially broad implications for both antitrust cases and Rule 23(b)(3) class actions generally. A review of the case law starting with Hydrogen Peroxide and continuing through Comcast and its progeny reveals the new rigor in antitrust class action decisions and suggests what the future may hold, including the type of arguments that may provide defendants the most likely chance of defeating class certification. After Comcast, rigor under 23(b)(3) can no longer be avoided in assessing all class actions questions, and courts should now apply Daubert fully in the class setting concerning both impact and damages. Courts should also closely evaluate plaintiffs’ proposed methodologies for proving impact to determine if they apply to each class member. Finally, courts will inevitably have to determine how rigorously to scrutinize experts’ damages methodologies and whether Comcast requires or suggests more scrutiny in assessing common evidence for measuring damages.

Forensic economists are often asked to calculate economic damages in cases that are tried in the United States but involve the death or injury of a citizen or resident of a foreign country. Commonly called international cases, they can range from a single tourist who is killed or injured while visiting the United States to mass torts such as plane crashes or product liability claims. The single plaintiff cases are typically relegated to state courts, whereas the Federal District Courts are often deemed to have jurisdiction over the determination of liability and subsequent economic damages in mass torts. In these and other types of international cases, macroeconomic data compiled by various governmental or private sources within the United States are of very limited use to the forensic economist preparing economic loss estimates. The decedent or injured party's economic, demographic, and social environment will in all likelihood differ significantly from individuals living in the United States. Rather, they are impacted by the macroeconomic conditions of their country of domicile or residence.

Expert evidence is a contentious area with a number of high profile cases highlighting unreliable “scientific” expert evidence, leading to appeals and acquittals. The purpose of this paper is to argue for improvement in the assessment of expert evidence reliability to avoid such difficulties.

A review of the area focused on the history of developing legal criteria for admitting “scientific” evidence. It examined the benefits and difficulties of approaches, and proposes an amendment to criteria for increased transparency and evidenced decision making.

The review indicated a range of difficulties with “expert” evidence admissibility, including inconsistency, an over-focus on narrow elements of evidence, difficulties in interpretation, and the potential to unfairly restrict evidence. An alternative to current approaches is proposed. This takes the form of a two-stage approach to consider whether or not to admit expert evidence. It comprises a preparation and an examination stage. The former seeks to critically review the evidence and define its nature. The latter applies two sets of criteria; a Daubert application for generally accepted physical sciences, and proposes an Abridged-Daubert for novel and social/behavioural sciences. Also proposed is increased involvement by experts in critically reviewing their own evidence and in providing statements of limitations.

The paper concludes by outlining the importance of developing such an approach for the UK legal system. It focuses on the application of specific criterion which could assist both Courts and witnesses to evaluate the quality of evidence prior to submission by accounting for the nature of the opinion evidence provided.

The paper outlines a practical approach to examining evidence which has benefit to practitioners and advocates when opinion evidence is outlined.

This article responds to James Keyte, Paul Eckles, and Karen Lent’s article “From Hydrogen Peroxide to Comcast: The New Rigor in Antitrust Class Actions” (“The New Rigor”). It argues that The New Rigor offers valuable strategic advice to defense counsel – and insight into defense counsel’s strategic thinking – but is much less effective as an objective statement of the law or a normative argument for legal reform. In the parlance that I adopt, The New Rigor succeeds in the role of coach but much less so in the roles of commentator and critic.

In class action antitrust litigation, the standards for acceptable economic analysis at class certification have continued to evolve. The most recent event in this evolution is the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S. Ct. 1435 (2013). The evolution of pre-Comcast law on this topic is presented, the Comcast decision is thoroughly assessed, as are the standards for developing reliable economic analysis. This article explains how economic evidence of both antitrust liability and damages ought to be developed in light of the teachings of Comcast, and how liability evidence can be used by economists to support a finding of common impact for certification purposes. In addition, the article addresses how statistical techniques such as averaging, price-dispersion analysis, and multiple regressions have and should be employed to establish common proof of damages.

Health social movements address several issues: (a) access to, or provision of, health care services; (b) disease, illness experience, disability and contested illness; and/or (c) health inequality and inequity based on race, ethnicity, gender, class and/or sexuality. These movements have challenged a variety of authority structures in society, resulting in massive changes in the health care system. While many other social movements challenge medical authority, a rapidly growing type of health social movement, “embodied health movements” (EHMs), challenge both medical and scientific authority. Embodied health movements do this in three ways: (1) they make the body central to social movements, especially with regard to the embodied experience of people with the disease; (2) they typically include challenges to existing medical/scientific knowledge and practice; and (3) they often involve activists collaborating with scientists and health professionals in pursuing treatment, prevention, research, and expanded funding. We present a conceptual framework for understanding embodied health movements as simultaneously challenging authority structures and allying with them, and offer the environmental breast cancer movement as an exemplar case.

All societies in the modern world are troubled by crime, and the general public is equally fascinated by criminals and fearful of criminal behaviour. In the United Kingdom, events such as the murders of Jack the Ripper, the Yorkshire Ripper and Harold Shipman, and the Soham tragedy, coupled with film and television programmes including Silence of the Lambs, Cracker and Crime Scene Investigation, have fuelled the public's consciousness of the criminal mind.In the fight against crime, the development of offender profiling by the FBI in the USA has further captured people's imagination. The technique was introduced to help law enforcement agencies solve serious crimes such as serial rape or murder, and to a lesser extent arson and property crime. At the heart of profiling lies the belief that by combining psychological principles with crime scene analysis, it is possible to identify the likely characteristics of a perpetrator.Although advances in crime detection are welcomed, the profiling field appears riddled with contradiction and disagreement. Social scientists argue that the discipline is unscientific due to methodologically weak research, while police officers appear sceptical about its benefits for solving crime. In Britain, profiling has witnessed both notable successes, for example Canter's profile of the serial rapist and murderer John Duffy, and dramatic failures, such as the Colin Stagg profile in the Rachel Nickell inquiry. This article reviews the offender profiling literature, examines its applicability in the legal system and identifies areas for future research.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.