Monday, March 31, 2008 : 10:30 a.m.

How Tom Prickett Might Have Reviewed the Expert Testimony in the Famous 'A Civil Action' Trial

E. Scott Bair, Ph.D., Ohio State University

The use of ground-water models in litigation is one of the sub-disciplines of groundwater hydrology to which Tom Prickett made pioneering contributions.  In 1995, he and Wayne Pettyjohn co-authored a paper describing the framework that an expert witness works within as an expert witness including descriptions of five major components a modeler needs to be aware of during litigation.  Tom developed this approach to litigation by serving as an expert on some of the largest state and federal cases dealing with water rights and groundwater contamination of our time. By 1995, he had been involved with 23 cases: 8 hearings, 5 in state courts, 8 in federal courts, 1 in international court, and 1 before the U.S. Supreme Court.  The five components in the paper are: interviewing your prospective attorney, preparing your testimony, being deposed, negotiated settlements between parties, and the trial.  Tom did not participate in the now famous ‘A Civil Action’ trial, although many of the points in his paper are borne out in the proceedings and testimony in that case.  Recognizing how much the award-winning book ‘A Civil Action’ is used in high school and college curricula today, I am curious how Tom would have evaluated the hydrogeologic testimony presented in that trial.

E. Scott Bair, Ph.D., Ohio State University Dr. Bair is Chair of the Department of Geological Sciences at Ohio State. Scott's innovative teaching of hydrogeology led to receiving Distinguished Teaching Awards in 1988 and 1997. In 1998, he was elected Fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA), and was selected as the GSA's Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer in 2000. Scott is well-known for creating a course entitled, "Science in the Courtroom" in which reading, writing, and computational assignments are used in a mock trial based on the infamous federal groundwater contamination case at Woburn, MA (the case upon which the movie 'A Civil Action' is based).


2008 Ground Water Summit