Michigan Law Review Volume 68 Issue 6 1970 Securing, Examining, and Cross-Examining Expert Witnesses in Environmental Cases David Sive Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr Part of the Environmental Law Commons, Evidence Commons, and the Litigation Commons Recommended Citation David Sive, Securing, Examining, and Cross-Examining Expert Witnesses in Environmental Cases, 68 MICH. L. REV. 1175 (1970). Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol68/iss6/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Michigan Law Review at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Michigan Law Review by an authorized editor of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. SECURING, EXAMINING, AND CROSS EXAMINING EXPERT WITNESSES IN ENVIRONMENTAL CASES David Sive* T is a known lawyer's joke, kept carefully from laymen, that if I a lawyer does a particular job once, he may deem himself an expert. This observation is even more applicable to the litigation of environmental matters than it is to matters such as chapter XI ar rangement proceedings, Securities and Exchange Commission regis tration statements, or most other fields of acknowledged legal ex pertise. The reason is self-evident: The field is so new. The number of cases from which to draw one's experience is small, and the variety of fora and consequently of applicable procedural codes is large. The present situation may not be different from that existing in other fields of law which are currently in an evolutionary stage: midway between, at the one extreme, the stage of borrowing most of their substantive and procedural doctrines from already delineated areas of law, and, at the other extreme, the stage when they are recognized as separate bodies of law, with their own doctrines, their own chap ters in the encyclopedias, and their O'Wn law school courses.