I don't have a transcript handy and don't recall whether the quote below is exact, but I will assume it is accurate.
>"C. Credibility of Plaintiff's experts
>
>"Furthermore, the Court finds that both Dr. Sampson and Dr. Barrett
>are biased heavily in favor of the Plaintiff and thus the weight to
>be accorded their testimony is slight in any event.
The charge of bias referred to the fact that the plaintiff was the National Council Against Health Fraud and I am the Counci's Vice President. The judge decided that since I was an officer, he would would consider my testimony biased. It had nothing to do with my testimony, because he did not permit me to testify about the merits of the case. When my turn came, he would not let me testify about homeopathy on grounds that Dr. Sampson had already done so and that my testimony would be redundant. It would not have been redundant. Nothing for which my testimony was planned would have overlapped what Dr. Sampson said, but the lawyer was so intimidated by the judge that he didn't want to argue about it.
The lawyer then asked whether I could testify about FDA regulation. The judge said yes. This had nothing to do with the merits of the case, but we could see that the defendant was gaining the judge's sympathy by portraying himself as a law-abiding citizen who complied with FDA regulations. The judge permitted my testimony about the regulatory history but would not permit me to explain how I knew that the company was marketing illegally (which is was doing and still does).
>Both are long-time board members of the Plaintiff; Dr. Barrett has
>served as its Chairman.
Not correct -- an interesting example of how sloppily the judge looked at the case.
>Both participated in an application to the U.S. FDA during the early
>1990s designed to restrict the sale of most homeopathic drugs. Dr.
>Sampson's university course presents what is effectively a
>one-sided, critical view of alternative medicine. Dr. Barrett's
>heavy activities in lecturing and writing about alternative medicine
>similarly are focused on the eradication of the practices about
>which he opines. Both witnesses' fees, as Dr. Barrett testified, are
>paid from a fund established by Plaintiff NCAHF from the proceeds of
>suits such as the case at bar. Based on this fact alone, the Court
>may infer that Dr. Barrett and Sampson are more likely to receive
>fees for testifying on behalf of NCAHF in future cases if the
>Plaintiff prevails in the instant action and thereby wins funds to
>enrich the litigation fund described by Dr. Barrett.
This conclusion was preposterous. The plaintiff's lawyer asked how I was paid, and I said that I was paid out of the proceeds of suits the Council had filed. Nobody asked me what I was paid. My fee was $500 per (12-hour) day, probably 25% of what most experts charged. It's not fun flying to California to testify, and I can assure you that I had no plan to do it often. I like to do reports from home, but I don't enjoy courtroom work or traveling.. Except for the fact that my fee was far lower than that of the expert witness, the payment situation was no different than it would be for any expert. Experts who do good work tend to be hired again. The main person who was biased in the case was the judge.
>It is apparent, therefore, that both men have a direct, personal
>financial interest in the outcome of this litigation.
If no fund had existed, the lawyer would have paid me out of his own pocket.
>Based on all of these factors, Dr. Sampson and Dr. Barrett can be
>described as zealous advocates of the Plaintiff's position, and
>therefore not neutral or dispassionate witnesses or experts. In
>light of these affiliations and their orientation, it can fairly be
>said that Drs. Barrett and Sampson are themselves the client,
In other words, whether or not we are experts makes no difference because we are officers of the group that filed the suit. Some judges would be willing to listen to what I had to say and then decide whether it is credible. This judge ruled that I could not address the heart of the case even though he had a written summary of what we wanted to prove that went far beyond what Dr. Sampson had covered.
>and therefore their testimony should be accorded little, if any,
>credibility on that basis as well."
I found his comments rather odd since he didn't permit me to express a single word that was relevant to the merits of the case. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Stephen Barrett, M.D. Board Chairman, Quackwatch, Inc. NCAHF Vice President and Director of Internet Operations P.O. Box 1747, Allentown, PA 18105 Telephone: (610) 437-1795
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