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In a quite astonishing opinion the Maine Appellate court has ruled that an expert witnesses' inability to add or subtract, or recognize right from left, didn't disqualify him as an expert competent to provide his opinion on a drunk driving causing serious injury case to the jury. In this case the defendant lost control of his truck plus crashed, injuring himself as well as the victim, leaving the victim paralyzed from the waist down. A blood-alcohol test administered at a healthcare facility less than 3 hours following the accident registered defendant's blood-alcohol level at 0.16%. The defendant was subsequently indicted for aggravated strike plus aggravated OUI. The main matter at the defendant's test was the identity of the vehicle's driver in the course of the accident. The state expert identified the driver based on his "left sided" injuries, instead of the passenger that had "proper sided" injuries. The State's expert further testified found on the matter of defendant's blood-alcohol level, extrapolating from the outcome of the blood-alcohol test taken at a healthcare facility returning to the time of the accident. The defense attorney argued that the say expert was not qualified to provide his opinion because of a particular exchange during voir dire inside that the State's expert, attempting to describe the nature of his condition, testified that, "I don't recognize right from left but do not-am unable to add or subtract even easy numbers." Noting that the State's expert was finally asked to estimate defendant's blood-alcohol level plus to explain the importance of left-sided plus right-sided injuries, defendant contends that the State's expert's learning impairment rendered him incompetent to testify. After conducting a voir dire examination, outside the presence of the jury, the court denied defendant's motion. The court found that the State's expert was sufficiently qualified to testify plus that the jury should decide the weight to get to the expert's results. In the court's words: We find no clear error inside the court's competency determination. Notwithstanding the State's expert's self-reported learning impairment, the court was able to observe the noticeable fluency with that he explained his opinions, including his ability to distinguish right-sided plus left-sided injury patterns plus perform the calculations essential to extrapolate from the results of defendant's blood-alcohol test. What is many astonishing about this opinion is the disparity with that the courts usually treat say specialists vs. defense experts. Courts sound usually to bend over backwards to obtain how to approve say specialists, whilst searching for any purpose to disqualify a defense expert. One is left to wonder what can have happened had this been a defense expert.
Expert Witness For Truck Accidents
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