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Department of Citations for Obscure Propositions

By Peter Nordberg

Sometimes we run across an expert report that seems largely devoid of direction or argument, and we find it can be hard to identify, in any succinct and familiar legal vocabulary, the evidentiary vice from which it suffers.You've seen the kind of report we're talking about. The expert may be well qualified, and the propositions stated in the report, considered in themselves, may look defensible enough -- some to the point of being platitudinous. Each proposition may even be supported by citations to the literature. But the report itself meanders, proceeding from one proposition to another with no evident organizing principle. Although the exposition otherwise bears all the badges of literacy, the relationship between one point and the next is left obscure, as is the manner in which the expert's various assertions are thought to support his or her ultimate conclusions (if indeed the report offers decipherable conclusions at all)...continue to full post

Full post as published by Blog 702 on June 21, 2007 (boomark / email).