Are you litigating a case that involves a death or serious injury and considering having a PATHOLOGY EXPERT WITNESS testify at trial? If so, you’re probably wondering what information you need to gather for him or her, and how the process will work.
Well, you’ve come to the right place! As a board-certified forensic pathologist, Dr. Chundru travels the world to help legal teams by providing expert witness testimony during a variety of criminal and civil trials. To help you organize your case’s information for him, Dr. Chundru recommends you take the following three steps.
Step One – Provide Your Trial Timeline
Whether you select Dr. Chundru as your forensic expert witness or you choose to work with another professional, the first thing you’ll need to do is make sure the person you select is available at the time you need his or her help. Doctors who are skilled at providing this type of testimony are hard to come by. As such, their schedules fill up very quickly. While Dr. Chundru understands that trial dates may change, having a general timeline of when you’ll need him available to take the witness stand will allow him to determine if he’s available to assist with your case. Since his services are in high-demand, his schedule does fill up quickly.
Step Two – Share the Original Medical Examiner’s Findings
In order to testify, a forensic expert witness will need to be extremely familiar with the death or serious injury that is being discussed at trial. This means that he or she will need to do a lot of research based on the original medical examiner’s findings. From this main report, professionals like Dr. Chundru are able to interpret a variety of sub-reports, including:
- Physical examinations
- Laboratory tests
- Hospital records
- Crime scene reports
Sometimes, these individual reports can lead to different interpretations. A second set of eyes focused solely on your case may also have the time to find something that was originally missed by a busy medical examiner when an autopsy was performed.
Step Three – Provide Access to the Complaint
Whether the case is criminal or civil in nature, and regardless of who you’re representing, Dr. Chundru needs to understand what is being alleged. Understanding the context of the complaint helps forensic expert witnesses prepare for trial and provide easy-to-understand answers to the questions you are going to ask and the questions you suspect the opposing attorney will raise.
Working with a Forensic Expert Witness
To sum it up, the most important thing you can establish when working with an expert witness like Dr. Chundru is an open line of communication. By making sure he’s updated on your trial’s schedule, all allegations, your defense (if applicable), and the medical records, he’s able to provide his professional opinion and translate that into testimony that is easy for anyone to understand.
Contact his practice to learn more about Dr. Chundru and how he relies on his 20 years of experience investigating deaths and serious injuries to help legal teams at trial.
