> In the federal voting rights lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker on Thursday blocked efforts by plaintiffs to question a representative of the governor’s office to see whether it played a role in UF’s decision to block the testimony by the professors. But Walker added that he was “not saying there is no issue here,” and openly speculated in his ruling that federal prosecutors could pursue felony witness-intimidation charges and said the plaintiffs might sue over the matter in civil court.
Hopefully they don't just drop the matter here and actually pursue criminal and/or civil cases as suggested. There needs to be repercussions for this shit beyond just "oops, nevermind."
>The university initially said that, because it was a public university and faculty are government employees, it would have been a conflict of its interests to allow three prominent professors to testify for plaintiffs in a lawsuit over new voting restrictions that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law earlier this year. It backtracked slightly days later when it said the three would be allowed to testify if they forfeited any compensation.
Expert witnesses get called to testify by either party and it’s industry standard they get compensated for their time. That doesn’t create any conflict of interest, and for the University to suggest it does is basically saying they believe their own professors are so unethical they would commit the crime of perjury in exchange for a meager expert witness payment.
Also, the idea they are a expert witness for the plaintiff in a case against the government creates a conflict because they work for a public university is the opposite of a conflict of interest. Whereas there would be more of a conflict if the experts were witnesses for the defendant (ie their employer).
The University is so tone deaf they don’t realize it’s a conflict of interest for the university to prevent professors from acting as experts in cases against parties that fund the university and even worse that they back track in the face of public exposure and pressure by allowing them to testify on the condition they can’t be compensated as expert witnesses…it’s a clear attempt to punish the professors if they do testify, which they probably won’t do now since they aren’t being compensated for their time.
To be fair expert witnesses get a few hundred an hour in compensation for preparing plus actually testifying. That being said in the grand scheme of things it's hardly a fortune, but compared to an average professor salary it's probably a decent bonus.
I was tangentially involved in a major healthcare medical error lawsuit.
The physicians being called as expert witnesses had fee schedules that were in the range of $2,000 an hour for testimony, $1,200 an hour for document review.
Without googling I’m betting that political science professors make less money than physicians, especially if those experts were surgeons. If your expert testimony required billionaire expert witnesses I’d bet their hour fees would be substantially more than a surgeons.
To be fair the median expert witness retainer is $2,000 and their fee may be a few hundred dollars per hour.
So let’s say this professor was getting paid even 100% of their salary on this one case, that is pretty meager fee to act inappropriately or commit the crime of perjury…which is the context of the university claiming their is a conflict and they would only permit the professor to act as a witness against the government if they don’t receive compensation. Even a fee matching their annual salary is meager fee in context of an act that would result in sanctions and inability to ever act as a expert witness again and/or termination of their non-tenured professorship as well as the professional humiliation.
Most tenured professors can negotiate roughly one day a week doing consulting. In my field, the profs consulted for pharma and were sometimes compensated in shares. At least, before they retired on their proceeds.
What university do most the math professors act as expert witnesses? Much less most act as expert witnesses and receive fees in excess of their salaries?
More like, if you disagree with the politics that your employer's investors have lobbied for, you need to keep quiet. The lawsuit doesn't appear to have anything to do with the operation of U of F.
When you are employed to attempt to ascertain and share the truth to society at large, and your immediate-employer attempts to block that critical societal function, it is okay to appeal to the sensibilities of your employer's boss -- society itself.
That shouldn't even matter. A conflict of interest doesn't invalidate what they would have to say. The problems with conflicts of interest in testimony is when that's deliberately hidden from anyone to see. Keep that in the open, and any problems from it will also be in the open.
Since the law suit is against the state, and as state school professors they are paid by the state and are employees of the state, it's somewhat reasonable to see a conflict of interest for them to testify when the defendant is their employer.
That said, it should be up to the lawyers and parties involved in the law suit to evaluate that conflict of interest. There was no reason for the school to interfere there.
First, the idea of "conflict of interest" is not about allowing or disallowing testimony. That's (1) normally an argument you make after testimony and (2) absolutely not something one party to a suit (the State of Florida in this case, via its organ the University of Florida) gets to decide unilaterally.
Second, your logic is exactly backwards. The reason you might infer a conflict of interest and thus judge someone's testimony because of their employer is that they might be induced (e.g. by being rewarded or punished) to represent their employer's opinions instead of their own. Here, they were called by the plaintiffs and are expected to testify against the interests of the State.
> it's somewhat reasonable to see a conflict of interest for them to testify when the defendant is their employer.
This statement appears to imply that you cannot sue your employer, because of a conflict of interest. I could almost see where you're going with this if the employer is the plaintiff, but when the employer is the defendant, that would be completely absurd.
They're testifying as expert witnesses, being brought in to be informative to the jury, not as first-hand witnesses to the law suit matter. In theory such experts should be objective and not have a bias towards either defendant or the plaintiff.
Your arguments here are a bit peculiar. Have you integrated the judge's response to the situation, where he not only ruled that there was no conflict of interest, but mentioned that the university's actions may constitute felony witness intimidation?
I didn't see the judge's response, so no. Though another commenter here mentioned it was the plaintiff that called for these people as expert witnesses (another fact I missed), which is also relevant. And I agree with the judge's take on the university's actions.
My intention with this thread wasn't to take a side or defend the university. My intention was to point out how having these specific people as expert witnesses could be seen as a conflict of interest (as compared to, say, expert witnesses that have no relation whatsoever to either party in the suit). This was in response to the people interpreting the situation strictly as "don't oppose the government". The university's actions were abhorrent, but the seed of their concern isn't necessarily invalid.
Your parent said nothing about a specific law. They're talking about the practice of law. But let's turn that around. If this is a conflict of interest, can you identify for us where that is codified?
(I am not a lawyer and I do not play one on the Internet) lets say it is important to notice this is a State-funded school, the students are adults and the Faculty have long and detailed legal protections in law, in addition to Constitutional rights as individuals.
yes, as noted, the legal framework of law in the USA
I had even money on "capitulate to the obvious" and "double down on dumb" but after yesterday where the president was lectured by a prominent expert, it was pretty obvious they knew they had failed.
