Financial Expert Witness Communication: A Practical Guide to Reporting and Testimony

CHAPTER 18 Financial Expert Witness Cross-Examination

CROSS-EXAMINATION

Cross-examination resembles a military sergeant’s drill exercise. Questions are posed by the drill sergeant (i.e., the opposing attorney) that are to be answered with only “yes, sir” or “no, sir” by the soldier (i.e., the financial expert witness). Granted, the opposing attorney will rarely bark questions like a drill sergeant. Instead, opposing legal counsel will be professional and diplomatic. But, the expectation is still to elicit only a “yes” or “no” response from the financial expert witness. The answers “I don’t know” or “I don’t recall” will be tolerated. However, if the financial expert witness makes any attempt to stray from these limited replies, the opposing attorney will seize this as an opportunity to attempt to show the financial expert as a biased advocate, an obstructionist, evasive, uncooperative, and, therefore, lacking in credibility.

Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own regarding propriety.

—Horatio Nelson

Cross-examination is the questioning of the financial expert witness in trial or at a hearing by an opposing party to the party who called the expert witness to testify. Cross-examination inquiries are generally limited by court rule to subjects brought out during direct examination. However, there is often great latitude ...