The law firm of Faraci Lange LLP announced today the addition of Hadley Matarazzo as an associate.

Previously employed as an associate at the New York City law firm of Weitz & Luxenberg, Matarazzo focuses her practice on toxic torts, environmental law, medical malpractice and products liability.

Matarazzo earned her law degree from the Rutgers University School of Law Newark and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Vermont. She resides in the city of Rochester, N.Y.

For the second time, the Monroe County Bar Association has selected Stephen G. Schwarz of Faraci Lange LLP, as its Raymond J. Pauley Award winner.

Schwarz is being honored for his outstanding contribution to the Bar Association’s continuing legal education process. Schwarz, previously recognized with the Pauley Award in 2004, was presented the 2010 award at the Monroe County Bar Association’s annual Installation Dinner.

Faraci Lange’s managing partner, Schwarz focuses his legal practice on personal injury and business litigation, including medical malpractice, serious auto accident cases, product liability, and toxic tort and environmental contamination cases in both state and federal courts.

Stephen Schwarz resides in the town of Fairport, N.Y.

Click here to read the full article from the Rochester Business Journal.

4.  Strategy in Approaching Cross-Examination

Above we discussed the tools that you have available to use for cross-examination. But what distinguishes good from great cross-examiners is knowing which tools to use in which situations and not trying to always use all of them at once. There are a wide variety of strategies and tactics you can utilize in cross-examining an expert witness. We have set forth some of the common ones in the sections below. Remember, however, that you will rarely wish to use all of them with one witness.

Once you know all of the different areas you want to address in your cross-examination (the “chapters” described above) it is also important to arrange the chapters in the best possible order for effectiveness. Sometimes order is self-evident because one issue is a prerequisite of another and must be done first. However, you should always try to follow Prof. Irving Younger’s sage wisdom “Start on a high note, end on a high note”. This strategy is important for both the jury and the witness. If you score points with your first chapter you engage the jury and get their attention for what is to follow. Conversely, if your first efforts fall flat the jury is likely to begin to tune you out entirely. In addition, regardless of how many times an expert has testified all witnesses have some nerves going into cross-examination. You want to build on this insecurity and not allow them to gain confidence by deftly fending off your very first attack. Ending on a high note just makes sense, as the last part the jury hears and is likely to best recall is among the most effective attacks you have. More…

3.  Legal Basics

a.  Introduction

There are certain legal rules that apply to all cross-examinations and others that apply to expert cross-examinations in particular. We will briefly review these below.

 b.  Phrasing  and ordering your questions

Cross-examination is essentially a series of statements made in the form of questions to which you know the correct answer and can hurt the expert if he or she disagrees. You should rarely if ever ask a question in any other format when cross-examining a witness. For example:

Q: In treating patients you are required to document significant medical events, right?

Q: One of the reasons for that is to document what you have done so it is available for review where pertinent, correct?

Q: The other reason is to communicate information to other health providers involved in the patient’s care, is that right?

Q: In the course of your practice you read and interpret notes and reports every day, is that a fair statement? More…

2.  Pretrial Preparation

Tiger Woods is a great natural athlete. But he is probably the greatest golfer of all time not because of his natural gifts alone but because of the work ethic that he pairs with it. Similarly, no matter how good you are on your feet you will never be a great cross-examiner unless you work tirelessly to master all of the underlying facts and subject matter of the expertise of the witness.

 a.  Doing your homework

Today it is easier than ever to obtain knowledge thanks to the internet. Except for medical experts in medical malpractice actions in state court actions we are provided with the identity of the expert witness to be called by the opposition. The internet enables us to find out almost everything this person has done in a professional capacity including articles written and positions attained. The internet also provides us with countless options for educational materials on virtually any area of medicine, science or engineering and typically on multiple levels from basic to highly advanced. As trial lawyers we must take advantage of these tools to learn everything we can within the time frame we have for preparation so that we can adequately test the opinions of opposing experts. More…

The American Association of Legal Nurse Consultants (AALNC) has selected Elizabeth K. Zorn of Faraci Lange LLP as its 2010 Member of the Year.

Zorn, a legal nurse consultant at Faraci Lange, has been an AALNC member for more than 15 years and recently began a three-year term on its board of directors. In 2006, Zorn started the LNCExchange, a Yahoo Group for legal nurse consultants and other professionals who work in medical legal litigation. Today, the LNCExchange has more than 1,350 members nationwide and generates about 600 posts per month – serving as a unique networking and educational resource for legal nurse consultants across the country.

A recognized authority in her field, Elizabeth Zorn wrote a chapter about a legal nurse consultant’s role in a law firm for the AALNC core textbook, “Legal Nurse Consulting: Principles and Practice.” She also has contributed two modules to the organization’s online course and has published an article about the LNCExchange in the Journal of Legal Nurse Consulting.

A registered nurse, Elizabeth Zorn resides in the town of Victor, N.Y.

VI.  Hardware: What You Need If The Court Doesn’t Have It

 According to ABA surveys, court systems are not rushing to equip courtrooms with the hardware needed to use new technological advances like trial presentation software. Many county courthouses in larger metropolitan areas may provide one or two “Courtrooms of the Future” in a building housing dozens of courtrooms, but by and large if you want to use this technology you will need to bring it in yourself.

What you need is a laptop computer loaded with the trial presentation software and all of your data for the trial, an LCD projector, a portable screen and portable speakers. None of these items are ridiculously expensive anymore as LCD projector prices have come way down. When my firm first purchased one ten years ago it cost $6,000. When we purchased another one last year it projected an image more than ten times brighter and cost less than $1,200. If you are planning on using a lot of video you may also want to purchase a portable hard drive to store it so you do not overwhelm the hard drive on your laptop. These devices have also come down in price significantly and can be purchased for under $100. Power strips and extension cords are also a must as most courtrooms were not designed with this technology in mind and electrical outlets are usually not plentiful. Since furniture in courtrooms is also usually sparse and rarely movable, a small portable table to set up on is also very helpful. More…

IV. Types of Helpful Software For Trial Presentations

If trial presentation software is the end all and be all, then why do you need to know about any other programs? The answer to this question is that there are many other programs available that can enhance your trial presentation and parts of them can be incorporated through the trial presentation software.

A. Case and Document Management Software

Concordance, Summation and CaseMap are all powerful programs that will help you organize complex cases. These programs are not really competitors with Sanction and Trial Director, but really adjuncts. Concordance, Summation and CaseMap are programs that need to be utilized from the very beginning of a case. They provide a means of organizing, annotating and word searching millions of pages of documents. They also allow multiple team members to work together doing such annotations as well as recording important links to deposition testimony and other non-documentary evidence. They provide you with a blue print for what you will need for trial. If you use one of these programs you will have most of your scanning done prior to trial as they all work with scanned images in similar formats needed later for the trial presentation software. All you then need to do is link them into your trial program. More…

I.  Evolution of Use of Technology in the Courtroom 

As stated above, use of blackboards for demonstrative purposes dates back to at least the 1950’s and probably before. When photocopy technology became entrenched in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, it did not take long before  poster-sized blow-ups of trial exhibits were prepared  to allow the jury to see the exhibit more clearly while it was being discussed by a witness or the attorney during closing argument. Although this was a great step forward from the traditional method of reading the document to the jury or worse, passing it from juror to juror to read individually, poster board blow-ups are bulky and when there are a lot of them in use, easily get misplaced and out of order. Trial lawyers late in trials that used such props frequently spent long minutes looking for the correct poster board while the jury’s attention would drift from the point she was trying to make.

Photographic slides and transparencies were also frequently used at trial during this era. Slide transparency material was developed that could be used with a standard copier so that you could create transparencies in your office. This was certainly a step forward, but again, organizing hundreds of transparencies for a heavy document case was a battle that ultimately would be lost at trial slowing your delivery and distracting the audience. More…