The court agreed with the defendant, and wrote an unusually thorough explanation of why this testimony was being excluded. The prosecution offered up perfectly well-qualified expert witnesses who proposed to testify about a variety of things, but the one that matters for present purposes is that they intended to characterize the material at issue as “trade secrets.” The defendant opposed admission of that testimony on the ground that “trade secret” – like “adulterated”/”misbranded” in our prior post – was a legal term of art, and thus improper as a basis for an expert opinion.
April 6, 2022), was being prosecuted for “conspiracy to steal trade secrets.” It doesn’t matter what the secrets were or who was involved. It’s not a tort case – it’s not even a civil case – so it demonstrates how widespread the problem legalistic “expert” witnesses extends, and also how wide-ranging relevant caselaw can be. But since we recently ran across an unusually favorable new case on this subject, we thought we’d address it again.
Not too long ago we researched precedent that forbade persons claiming to be “FDA experts” from opining that products are “adulterated” or “misbranded.” In that post, we mentioned that this research is a subset of a “general” precedent “precluding expert opinions on questions of law,” which we didn’t get into because Bexis’ book addressed it.
