This appeared in today’s New York Post.  Remember you can steal more with a suitcase than with a gun.

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A short video that reveals some of the inner workings of a forensic document laboratory and the anaysis of forged documents.

Ken Margolin Contributor Posted by Ken Margolin October 18, 2006 5:00 PM

In a blog entitled, “When to Call a Lawyer,” I touched on the topic of alteration of medical records. In this posting, I will address it in more detail. Accuracy in medical records is essential. They are relied upon by subsequent treating physicians to give an accurate picture of a patient’s prior medical history. In those instances when a medical professional must change a record – for example, if he realizes he had made a significant mistake of fact in the document – the fact that the change is being made after the original record was written, must be made clear, along with the author of the change and the precise date and time when the change was made.

More often than is acceptable, medical professionals faced with a disastorous result, try to hide the facts that may point to error on their part. Key records or laboratory reports may mysteriously disappear from the patient’s chart, leaving subsequent treating physicians – or attorneys and forensic experts – guessing at exactly what happened. Negative facts may be erased, or contrived facts added with an effort to make them look contemporaneous with the original recording.

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by Robert Ambrogi
Bullseye: November 2010
IMS ExpertServices™ is the legal industry’s premier full-service expert witness provider.

A major revision to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure takes effect Dec. 1, bringing about a significant change in the long-standing procedure governing expert witness reports.

No longer will Rule 26 require full discovery of draft expert reports and broad disclosure of any communications between an expert and trial counsel, as has been the case ever since the rule’s revision in 1993.

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Credentials should be carefully examined in your expert witness selections. Do they have the proper training, education, professional memberships, certification, and necessary experience? Attorneys should be aware that persons who advertise as handwriting analysts may be self-trained or trained as graphologists. Groups outside of the mainstream forensic science organizations abound. You also want to be sure you are hiring a scientist, someone who has extensive education and training in one of the natural sciences. A non-scientific degree e.g. an accounting degree for a document examiner should raise a red flag as to their experience with the application of the principles of applied science: Problem, hypothesis, materials, procedure, observations, and conclusion. You want a Forensic SCIENTIST!