The world is filled with people with gripes against one another. I don’t like being a cynic, so I try not to suggest that they are all bad people, but if there were ever a means to expose the dark underside of human nature, it would be through the reading of deposition transcripts from various and sundry civil litigation and arbitration conflicts. Just when I think I’ve heard and read it all, I’m confronted by yet another tale of nastiness as expressed in the litigation playpen. I find the low point of these battles take place during the depositions more so than during the hearings or trials. Depositions are the bare-knuckle alley cat fighting compared to the spotlighted and relatively civilized pugilism that occurs in the center ring of the courtroom. My caseload is kinda funny right now. I have this meaningful backlog of cases that I have taken up through deposition and awaiting the next step whenever the court and the combatants decide to proceed (or not). There are five of those on my docket with three being class action suits and two being bilateral civil cases. At least four of them are supposed to come to a head some time this year with the fifth one perhaps in early 2026.
Two of them are fairly big cases that are unlikely to settle based on what I know and the other three (the class action suits) consist of one that is an appeal that I know is being worked on and two that are awaiting preliminary trial. Those three are hard to estimate because the thing about class action suits is that they hinge somewhat on the overall political environment and which way the wind is blowing in the litigation world. They are all 401-k cases on the side of the participants as plaintiffs and as such are against their corporate sponsors and/or the investment managers and governing committees. If the atmosphere in the labor/pension world is favoring corporations, as some suspect it may be at this moment, those may just get dropped and not pursued any further. That would be a purely economic decision by the initiating class action law firm since they are the ones sponsoring the work product and paying the bills for the expert witness work. Since those three are with one law firm and they total about $400,000 invested in my testimony alone (assume there is three times that amount in expert witness costs overall and another $3-5 million in overall legal costs to date), there is a fairly big economic decision at hand about pursuing those cases further or dropping them.
I have one other large case that shifted from arbitration to civil litigation last year and that one is pending next steps. Who knows when that one will restart, but I doubt it is going away. I have drafted a first copy of a report, but that would have to be revised and updated even before any depositions were taken. Then there are three smaller cases in process. One is nearing completion because I believe it will settle. One is being slow-played over the next six months. And the last one is in the early stages of developing opinions and agreeing on a budget for a report submission later next month followed by a likely deposition a month or so later. As you can see, I have a small flow of work right now, but could have a ton of work at whatever moment any of those idling cases decided to go active.
I also have one very large global case that I have supposedly been selected for, but which has yet to get documented with an engagement letter and retainer. This one is a high-profile case that could become very involved. The lawyers keep assuring us that it is just a timing issue and that we will be in the thick of it any time now. That one has been in that state for almost eighteen months now, so I’m afraid I am a bit leary about the situation altogether.
In addition to that, I have a constant flow of inquiries for which I prepare a quick summation about why my skills fit the circumstances and send it off for consideration. I did that for two new potential cases last week and one has come back asking for an interview early next week, which I have agreed to and booked. It happens to be a Hong Kong case and I know only a very little about it. They will be speaking with me Wednesday morning their time and Tuesday evening my time. My batting average on these situations once I get to interview are about 60+%. I always assume that if I pitch myself for a situation and we don’t hear something quickly, that the odds of it going anywhere are pretty slim. I guess that is no different than any other sales process, and there is no denying that this is about selling myself as the answer to the litigant’s expert witness needs. I am pretty confident in my stage presence once in the interview process, but it seems more to hinge on cost (I am pricey for an expert witness, so only larger cases can make sense of my engagement) or on whether they want a very narrowly defined skill set that is more specialized than I tend to be. I am far more a generalist than a specialist and therefore my value is in generally credibility and broader arenas of financial expertise.
If someone asks me what my caseload looks like, I have to say it is currently 11 cases, but then I caveat that by saying something about how different cases run hot or cold at different times. As I’ve mentioned before, many people are fascinated by the arena and want to know more about it. Some want to know how one gets into the game. I can easily talk to that. But what really seems to grab people are the stories imbedded in the case circumstances. As a natural storyteller, it is relatively easy for me to weave and even embellish stores about these cases to grab the interest of many different listeners. Some cases only lend themselves to being of interest to specialists who understand the intricacies of the financial markets, but many are general enough to be made interesting to general listeners. I just heard on the radio today that old Country/Western song from B.J. Thomas released in 1975 (my undergrad graduation year) called Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song. When I heard it playing I immediately thought about the civil litigation process. The world is filled with people who “done somebody wrong” or people who feel someone has done them wrong. Usually its a very bilateral emotion or sentiment. The parties on both sides are aggrieved and as I read the discovery materials and evidence I start to develop a sense of who is more aggrieved and who is on the firmer side of justice. Sometimes its about the law, but often it is really just about baseline ethics. It is amazingly easy when reading the transcript of a deposition to tell a lot about how truthful the party being deposed is being. There is no certainty in that conclusion, but there is a real sense that comes through just as it must to a judge, arbitrator or jury. Sometimes its about the circumstances and sometimes its about the underlying credibility of the plaintiff or defendant. That is why depositions involve so much preamble trying to undercut the person being deposed’s background and veracity. In a recent case a great deal of time was spent laying out some shady tax experiences of a person, not because it related to the case at hand, but clearly because it was a matter of suggesting that the person was not trustworthy.
I always wish I had a steady caseload stream to work on, but then I would start to feel like I was back as a working stiff again. This way, the work comes at me in waves and I get the benefit of distracting myself with other people’s wrong-doing or sense of having been wronged. I will try through all of this not to lose faith in humankind.