Accident investigation/reconstruction is more than just a job or even a profession; it is more art than science and requires a dedication greater than a commitment of time. It takes constant reading, study, and analysis of accident information and case reconstructions to keep improving your performance, both in the field and in the courtroom.

While serving as director of NOAA s National Climactic Data Center in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bill Haggard noticed an explosion in the number of requests from attorneys needing weather data for their cases. The Center offered blue ribbon and gold sealed data certified by the Department of Commerce that could be submitted as evidence in a court of law, but government meteorologists could not be released from their full time duties to interpret this data in the courtroom. Into this void stepped pioneering forensic meteorologists, as well as Bill Haggard himself, who retired from the government for a second career as an expert witness. For a society enthralled by litigation and severe meteorological events, Weather in the Courtroom analyzes multiple diverse high-profile litigations in which weather was a significant factor. Were the disappearance of Alaskan Congressman Nick Begich s plane on October 16, 1972, the collapse of Tampa Bay s Skyway Bridge on May 9, 1980, and the crash of Delta Flight 191 in Dallas/Fort Worth on August 2, 1985, natural or human-caused disasters? Haggard s recounting of these litigations, in which he served as expert witness, show us just how critical interpretation of weather and climate data is to our understanding of what happened, and who, if anyone, is at fault. "

Defendant Reginald McKay, a mentally disturbed American who became a "home-grown" Islamic terrorist, poisoned members of a Jewish temple during Passover seder. After one of the The Trial Presentation Companion: A Step-by-Step Guide to Presenting Electronic Evidence in the Courtroom, written by award-winning legal technologist Shannon Lex Bales, is NITA's first-ever, comprehensive how-to manual on running electronic evidence in the courtroom. This face-saving guide will help you and your firm expand your comfort zone in working with all the bits and pieces--laptops, trial presentation software, document cameras, audio-visual components, the puzzling array of cords and cables--that are increasingly essential when presenting electronic evidence in court in the modern era. Checklists and guides are included to help your firm create a technology plan for trial and recognize where opposing firms may attempt less-than-reputable technical tactics, such as burden shifting, to throw a monkey wrench in your trial plan. For the judiciary, the book presents a warts-and-all view of trial technology and discusses reasonable presentation obligations by firms to the court and how the court can ensure more efficient technological processes and fewer problems in the courtroom. Part One, Trial Presentation in Theory, is just that: a theoretical explanation, in plain (and often tongue-in-cheek) English, about why expert trial technologists do what they do during pretrial and in court: how to organize and name exhibit files, choose the best software for your needs, build a trial kit of equipment to take to court, comply with the Trial Management Order, develop an effective workflow, cultivate relationships that provide mutual support in court and out, and much more. Part Two, Trial Presentation in Practice, shows you, step by illustrated step, how you, too, can bring that same game to your own legal team as you huddle for trial. Even if you don't know an HDMI port from a VGA and have never set up a folder system on your server before, The Trial Presentation Companion will show you how, and before you know it, you'll be running the show like you were born to it. This book is suitable for everyone from judges and law firm partners and associates to law students, budding trial technologists, and paralegals.

Don Porter’s debut novel, Notes From a Razed Courthouse, is set in an era when America itself was coming of age. In this richly textured, provocative tale of the Old West, four young workers on the transcontinental railroad join forces to create a freight express company that promises dollars and perils in equal measure. Their dreams of wealth collide with stark reality when one of them finds himself on trial in a very unfriendly town, charged with the murder of his missing partner and facing the gallows.

For years, the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Roberts has been at the center of a constitutional maelstrom. Here, the much-honored, expert Supreme Court reporter Marcia Coyle's examination of four landmark cases is "informative, insightful, clear and fair...Coyle reminds us that Supreme Court decisions matter. A lot." (Portland Oregonian). Seven minutes after President Obama put his signature to a landmark national health care insurance program, a lawyer in the office of Florida GOP attorney general Bill McCollum hit a computer key, sparking a legal challenge to the new law that would eventually reach the nation’s highest court. Health care is only the most visible and recent front in a battle over the meaning and scope of the US Constitution. The battleground is the United States Supreme Court, and one of the most skilled, insightful, and trenchant of its observers takes us close up to watch it in action. Marcia Coyle’s brilliant inside analysis of the High Court captures four landmark decisions—concerning health care, money in elections, guns at home, and race in schools. Coyle examines how those cases began and how they exposed the great divides among the justices, such as the originalists versus the pragmatists on guns and the Second Amendment, and corporate speech versus human speech in the controversial Citizens United case. Most dramatically, her reporting shows how dedicated conservative lawyers and groups have strategized to find cases and crafted them to bring up the judicial road to the Supreme Court with an eye on a receptive conservative majority. The Roberts Court offers a ringside seat to the struggle to lay down the law of the land.

More than 40,000 people are killed on our highways each year, & millions more are injured. Bad drivers & bad vehicles alone do not account for this carnage. The highway itself is often a contributing -even determining -cause of accidents.