I remember it like it was yesterday. I was at trial, sitting at the defense table and the plaintiff’s electronic medical records (EMR) expert was testifying before the jury. There he was, trying to invent conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory about how a defense witness lied about being physically present at the hospital during a certain time period. The crazy thing is that plaintiff’s pretrial electronic discovery requests never mentioned that witness. I remember thinking to myself: “This case now involves medicine, the law, and information technology (IT). The jury has to think this is the ‘trifecta’ of snooze. How did we get here?”

Thankfully, the judge did not permit much of the expert’s testimony, and he was ineffective as a witness. Because of this, our cross examination was short and we did not need to call our EMR expert and/or IT witnesses. We also did not lull the jury to sleep. Although this story had a “happy ending,” this incident could have easily spiraled out of control.