Discussion Forum Breach of Contract:

You have been offered an engagement to testify as a forensic accounting expert in a breach of contract case. The retaining attorney's letter to you indicates the type of work you will perform under the direction of the attorney. Do you find any issues with this arrangement? Explain.

 

Home work 1) You are preparing an expert opinion on a fraud investigation conducted by a qualified expert. The retaining attorney has redacted part of the previous investigator's report for privacy reasons. Would you be willing to rely on that report as a basis of your expert testimony? Explain.

 

Home work 2) You are being asked to testify as an expert in a criminal case of accounts receivable lapping. After examining the evidence, your personal feeling is there is not sufficient evidence to convict the accused, but you are being asked to testify regarding lapping as a modus operandi. Should you decline the engagement if you feel that your testimony is likely to lead to the accused being wrongfully convicted? Why? Exceptions? What if ? 

 

Home work 3)As an expert, you are permitted to opine regarding the ultimate issue. You are in court and are asked to testify as to whether the defendant's actions are consistent with a particular fraudulent billing scheme. However, your professional ethics forbid you from expressing opinions of guilt. What should you do?

 

Home work 4)You have been offered an engagement to testify as an expert in case of alleged fraud in the context of a corporate acquisition. The retaining attorney has told you that you are not to produce any kind of report, even an oral one, without first being asked for it. In conducting your investigation, you discover an embezzlement scheme that has nothing to do with the merger. Do you report your discovery to the attorney? Explain.

 

Home work 5)You are being hired to serve as an expert witness in a corporate corruption case. The company has already conducted an internal investigation and concluded that a particular purchasing officer has been running a kickback scheme spanning a 13-year period. Estimated losses are in the millions of dollars, and the company wants to recover. Immediately after accepting the engagement, you sit down with the retaining attorney to discuss the documentation that you will need to prepare report and testimony. To your surprise, the retaining attorney tells you that you have free access to all company employees and records. However, you are not to review any e-mail as part of your investigation. How do you respond to this attorney?

 

Case Analysis 1)You are scheduled to testify in a criminal case in which the defendant is charged with bilking customers out of their deposits. The alleged scheme involves selling condominium time shares in Miami's South Beach area. According to the allegations, the defendant took millions of dollars for deposits in condominium time shares, but instead of constructing the condominium as planned, the defendant paid himself an exorbitant salary and did little more than hire an architect to draw up plans.

You have been hired by the state attorney to testify as to the amounts of money that the defendant paid himself over the three years in which the alleged scheme persisted. Your analysis of bank records shows that the defendant took a salary of $300,000 per year for a total of four years. During the same period he collected about $12 million in deposits.

You are very comfortable regarding the report you are writing. The bank records are very clear, and the only difficult part was tracing some of the payments to the defendant because it took some time to discover all the bank accounts involved.

The problem is that the district attorney is now pushing you to say in your report that the defendant's salary was unreasonable given his experience, and also that he had no reasonable expectation that the project could have succeeded.

You express doubts regarding your ability to include such wording in your report. The district attorney responds by asking you to do the right thing, and proceeds to show you photographs of elderly and frail persons who lost money because the defendant had told them how good of an investment they were making.

The district attorney further states that the judge in the case will most certainly not exclude your testimony for your lack of qualifications. The judge very strongly favors prosecutors, and there is a very strong political pressure to bring a conviction.

You have doubts about your qualifications to testify in the additional areas requested by the prosecutor, but you have worked for this prosecutor before and know that she is a straight shooter. You believe her when she says that the judge will permit your testimony.

Required

Should you agree to expand your testimony? Support your response. What issues are involved?