Irvin E. Richter's office is decorated in the ever-fashionable taste of prosperity. The walls are high and oak-paneled, the light fixtures gleaming like candelabra, the windows wide, the carpets deep and patterned, the desk expansive.
Not bad for a man who set himself up in business 10 years ago, on a hunch about the potential needs of the legal marketplace. Not bad, to be head of a company that will do between $30 million and $40 million in business this year.
Richter is head of Hill International Inc., which is based in Willingboro, N.J. It is a company of technical experts - and expert witnesses for the courts of the nation.
It is an "industry" that has been growing in this country, where litigation is frequently the first course of action in settling arcane and technical disputes.
And as the disputes seem to grow, so do the expert witnesses. They have appeared recently in cases to help place the blame for the loss of a woman's ''psychic" powers after she underwent a CAT scan on her brain, and to establish the cause of an auto accident on a rainy night in a liability lawsuit.
They have appeared to help decide how the Scarsdale Diet doctor, Herman Tarnower, really died, and to establish the value of property in a divorce settlement.
They have appeared to help decide whether a 19-year-old man named Terry McCracken, accused of killing a Collingdale man one night in 1983, had residue on his hand from the gun used in the crime, and to determine the standard of ''advised consent" - for example, what information should be provided to a weekend athlete before he decides on a knee operation.
There are, by now, "experts" willing to testify in virtually every field, for every case - on every side of an issue. The field has burgeoned to include about 50 varieties of recognized and self-described experts, from arboriculturists, biochemists and canoeists, to meteorologists, physicians and videographers.
Richter's firm is among the top companies in the country providing expertise in virtually every aspect of construction and contract negotiations to clients that include builders, buyers and public entities that find themselves involved in major construction-claim litigation. Some of those cases result in billion-dollar court awards or settlements. All of those cases rely on the findings and testimony of experts.
"I anticipate doing about $100 million (annually) in five years," Richter said. "When I started, I never anticipated that we would do that kind of volume. Never. I was hoping just to survive. . . . The industry grew, and just pulled us along."
The use of expert witnesses is so widespread, and by now so ingrained in the legal system, that professionals from all sides are beginning to call for standards, or guidelines, to establish just who should be testifying to what.
"We have many cases where the expert (testifying) against us is not of the appropriate speciality, or he may not have done the (medical) procedure in question in his entire career," said Peter Sweetland, a board member of the Physicians Insurance Co., which insures nearly 111,000 doctors nationally.
"Everybody who hires an expert has something that they want, and that's true no matter which side they're on," said Dr. Larry Howard, director of the Forensic Sciences Division of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in Atlanta.
"If I were an attorney, and I wanted someone to testify for me, I would go from one expert to another until I found somebody to testify as I wanted him to," Howard said.
KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS
"An expert, in legal terms, is the only one who can give an opinion as part of the testimony (in a court case) and who . . . has knowledge or skills beyond what a layman has," according to Richard Van Duizend, staff counsel for the National Center for State Courts in Washington, D.C.
One such witness, Jerome Staller, who heads the Center for Forensic Economic Studies in Philadelphia, works full time doing research for lawyers on statistical projections, traveling around the country to testify and attending legal seminars.
Staller says the expert witness serves several functions: He acts as an informational resource, provides testimony in court and, "in a large part," educates the attorney who hires him in the facts of a case.
"I view it as a profession," he said. "I'm not ashamed that I spend a lot of time in legal work, and direct my efforts this way. . . . I love it. "
Another expert witness, one with an unusual specialty, is Thomas Jacoby, who is a supervisor of physical education for the Philadelphia School District and a director at a student camp in the Poconos. He testifies in cases requiring expertise in canoeing, kayaking and athletics.
Sometimes, Jacoby said, he sees negligence cases that "would turn somebody's hair gray." There was, for instance, a case in Massachusetts that involved a rafting trip for a group of retarded adults who went into the river with "no preparation . . . no training" - and which resulted in several injuries, he said.
Van Duizend, of the center for state courts, has high praise for most expert witnesses. "They try damn hard," he said. "I'll say that for every person who's an expert witness on a regular basis."
WELL-PAID
They are also paid well for their efforts. Physicians earn an average daily rate of $2,500 for testifying in court, according to a guide to expert-witness fees published by the National Forensic Center in Lawrenceville, N.J., a nonprofit association for experts and lawyers with 5,000 members.
Psychiatrists earn an average of $1,770 per day, chemists $770, antique appraisers $580, accountants $1,560 and computer scientists $790, according to the guide.
Further, 70 percent of the expert witnesses who responded to the center's request for information reported that their court-related work had increased last year. Seventy-five percent said they believed that attorneys were using expert-witness services more now than they did five years ago.
"There can be no question that the use of forensic (legal) experts will expand in direct proportion to the growth of the American justice system," says the center's brochure. By way of example, the guide includes two new types of expert witnesses in its list this year, adding "real estate appraisal" and "substance abuse."
"There are more experts to choose from, and an increase in expert- witness services," said Philadelphia lawyer David Shrager, a former president of the American Trial Lawyers Association who specializes in medical
malpractice and product liability litigation. He attributes the increase to greater specialization in fields such as science, medicine and engineering.
"As I look back 25 years ago, there were general engineers who would be used," Shrager said. "(But over the years), there was a breakout of what would be called 'design engineers,' 'human-factor engineers,' 'biomedical engineers.' "
One of the most striking changes has occurred in medical malpractice lawsuits. Physicians and psychiatrists, who were traditionally loath to testify in court against their colleagues, are now signing up with witness- referr al services and advertising their expertise in legal journals. One medical-expert advertisment runs a photograph of a man dressed like a doctor - wearing boxing gloves and promising "heavyweight malpractice experts."
Jerry Zaslow, a surgeon and former president of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, worries that unscrupulous or incompetent experts - known in the legal profession as "hired guns," "traveling witnesses" or ''professional witnesses" - can thwart the truth-seeking purpose for which a real expert is required in court.
Zaslow is not alone in his fears. Several state legislatures, including those in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have before them bills that would provide at least minimum qualifications for those who testify as medical experts in court.
"If they virtually make a living traveling around testifying, to us, really, that's an abuse of their professional talent," said Sweetland, of the Physicians Insurance Co.
ENDORSED LEGISLATION
His organization has endorsed the bill before the New Jersey legislature that would require any attorney filing a medical-malpractice lawsuit to provide an affidavit from an expert at the time the suit is filed, and the expert to prove he or she has practiced medicine or taught medicine within at least five years.
"You just can't say 'They have an expert,' " Sweetland said. "You have to say 'They have a real expert.' "
Normally, when an attorney agrees to accept a case, he also agrees to pay the experts' fees, which are then taken out of the lawyer's share of any resulting settlement or court award, Sweetland said. A small percentage of professional witnesses also work on contingency fees.
Most experts accept court work only on a part-time basis, and many say they do so out of a sense of responsibility to the standards of their own profession.
Dr. Athole Jacobi, chairman of anesthesia at the Medical College of Pennsylvania, is one such part-time witness who contends that professionals such as she "have an obligation" to offer their expertise in lawsuits.
Jacobi testified in court for the first time in 1974. Since then, she has been hired as an expert between 20 and 30 times and has appeared in court three times.
Real expert evaluation in litigation, Jacobi said, can help the legal process by dissuading plaintiffs from pursuing frivolous cases as well as prompt the defense to quickly settle problem cases out of court.
"Certainly, there are some physicians who would testify in a surgery case one week and an anesthesia case the next. . . . But if we as physicians refuse (to testify)," Jacobi said, "and a plaintiff's attorney is forced to go outside the city or to people who are not experts in the field, it might be worse" for physicians who are sued.
Lawyers such as malpractice attorney Shrager argue that it is not hard to expose an unqualified "expert" on the witness stand.
'HARD-CORE EXPERTS'
"There is a group - and I hope it's a small group - of hard-core experts. . . . They're always delicious witnesses to cross-examine. From the time you say, 'It's good to see you in court again, doctor,' until the end of the cross-examination, it's perfectly apparent that you're dealing with a hired- gun," Shrager said. "And however smooth and facile that kind of witness is, he's perfectly capable of shooting himself in the foot, or even some other more vital parts of his anatomy."
Another prominent Philadelphia lawyer, who did not want to be identified, acknowledged that there were some attorneys who had a "stable of experts that will bend to testify the way he wants them to testify. And insurance companies will have their stable of experts to testify the way they want them to testify. That's life . . .
"You first ask (an expert) to look at the thing objectively. If he comes up with the worst, and says, 'That's my honest opinion,' then you might go somewhere else and find someone who sees it a different way - and sees it in a way that benefits you - and you'll hire him," he said.
But, he added, "there is an absolutely legitimate area of experts. . . . I don't think it's fair to say, 'You buy your expert and I buy mine. . . .
"Certainly, there's some witness-shopping that goes on," said Van Duizend, of the center for state courts. "It depends on whether the attorney is really looking for an evaluation of his or her case, or whether that attorney thinks he or she has a case, and is looking for the best way of presenting it."
For Van Duizend, the issue is more subtle: "Are they a neutral expert, simply expounding the facts, or are they part of the litigation team? . . .
"My impression is that the juries try very hard, and a lot of them have a very good sense of someone who is B.S.-ing them," he said. "But do they understand all of it?"
IMPACT ON TRIALS
American Lawyer magazine last month explored the issue of how crucial and contradictory testimony can affect the outcome of a case, focusing on the trial of Jean Harris, the former prep school headmistress who was found guilty of fatally shooting Herman Tarnower, the Scarsdale Diet doctor, in 1980.
The question at the trial was whether Tarnower was murdered by Harris, as the prosecution charged, or whether he was shot accidentally while trying to wrestle the gun from Harris to stop her suicide attempt, which was what the defense contended.
The prosecution's expert was Dr. Louis Roh, the deputy medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Tarnower. Roh first said Tarnower was shot by four bullets. Later, he changed his testimony to insist that the victim had been shot by three bullets - and that one of the bullets first pierced Tarnower's hand and then entered his chest when he extended his hand defensively. Roh called in a second "expert" to bolster his statement that he found palm tissue in Tarnower's chest wound.
But an expert for the defense, Dr. A. Bernard Ackerman, a New York skin pathologist, disputed Roh's testimony. Ackerman noted that Roh was not a skin specialist, and argued that no palm tissue could be identified in the wound.
Both experts continue to stand by their opinions, while Harris remains in prison hoping for clemency.
Vastly differing opinions can sometimes result from an overload of team spirit on the part of the battling experts, according to Van Duizend. He is concerned about what that can mean for a jury.
"When somebody's called as an expert . . . when they start getting challenged by the other side, it's kind of human nature to feel 'I'm going to go for my team,' " Van Duizend said.
"What that leads to - and I'm not suggesting evil purposes here - (is that) you get pushed beyond the sharp definitions of your expertise, and start answering questions that become very speculative."
Staller, of the Center for Forensic Economic Studies, explains the phenomenon a little differently. "You're staking out a position that you're going to want, professionally speaking, to hold under cross-examination," he said. "So you become wedded to it, not so much as an advocate but as a professional."
Staller became a full-time witness in 1970, when he left his job as an economist for the federal government and opened the center with a partner who has since left it.
He is now taking voice lessons to improve his court presence. "I knew I had a habit of dropping my voice at the end of a phrase," he said, "and obviously . . . this is my profession - as communicator of information.
"I also want to perform," he said. "You're before a judge or jury . . . You're on stage. You're before people. You're performing. You're putting on a presentation. Just from your own inside, you want to be the best you can."
Staller came prepared for his performance in federal court in Philadelphia not long ago, when he testified on behalf of a young man who contended that his back was seriously injured in an auto accident on Cherry Street.
Wearing a suit of businesslike brown, Staller appeared like a professor next to an easel filled with mathematical tables, directly in front of the jury box. He lectured the jurors on the potential economic fate of the plaintiff, who contended that the man could not work as result of his injury.
About two years ago, Staller was called in as an expert for the Goodyear Tire Co. in a liability suit against Goodyear and the Penske Corp., brought by the estate of Mark Donohue, the 38-year-old race car driver who died after his car crashed during the 1975 Grand Prix race. Staller was asked to assess damage costs in the fatal accident.
"I was on the stand about 2 1/2 days. It was the best testimony I've ever given," Staller said.
The jury didn't think so. Staller estimated damages at $2 million. The jury award was for $6.9 million.
