Ethics Expert Witnesses: 13

Marguerita M. Cheng, CFP®, CRPC®, RICP®, Chief Executive Officer at Blue Ocean Global Wealth, is a Certified Financial Planning Expert with 18 years of experience. Prior to co-founding Blue Ocean Global Wealth, she was a Financial Advisor at Ameriprise Financial and an Analyst and Editor at Towa Securities in Tokyo, Japan. Ms. Cheng is a past spokesperson for the AARP Financial Freedom Campaign and a regular columnist for Investopedia & Kiplinger. She is a CFP® professional, a Chartered Retirement Planning CounselorSM, a Retirement Income Certified Professional® and a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. As a Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (CFP Board) Ambassador, Ms. Cheng helps educate the public, policymakers, and media about the benefits of competent, ethical financial planning. She served on the Financial Planning Association (FPA) National Board of Directors from 2013 – 2015 and is a past president of the Financial Planning Association of the National Capital Area (FPA NCA). 

Marguerita Cheng CNBC Interview on Social Security 

Awards and Honors - Ms. Cheng is a recipient of the Ameriprise Financial Presidential Award for Quality of Advice and the prestigious Japanese Monbukagakusho Scholarship. In 2017, she was named the #3 Most Influential Financial Advisor in the Investopedia Top 100, a Woman to Watch by InvestmentNews, and a Top 100 Minority Business Enterprise (MBE®) by the Capital Region Minority Supplier Development Council (CRMSDC).

Litigation Support - Ms. Cheng serves as a Women’s Initiative (WIN) Advocate and subject matter expert for CFP Board, contributing to the development of examination questions for the CFP® Certification Examination. She also volunteers for CFP Board Disciplinary and Ethics Commission (DEC) hearings. Services to attorneys representing plaintiff and defendant include financial due diligence, thorough reporting, depositions, and trial testimony as needed.

Areas of Litigation Expertise:

Ernest N. Charlesworth, MD, is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology, the American Board of Internal Medicine, American Board of Allergy & Immunology, and the American Board of Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology. He has over 40 years of experience in his field of expertise.

Dr. Charlesworth is one of only a few United States physicians who is board certified in both Allergy / Immunology and Dermatology. Well-versed in his area of expertise, he has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles, several textbook chapters, and two textbooks. He has been honored by the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology for both Distinguished Service and as a Distinguished Fellow.

Dr. Charlesworth offers litigation support, except independent medical examinations, to attorneys representing both Plaintiff and Defense. He has been deposed and/or testified approximately 15 times since 2010. His services include issues of causation and standard of care. Dr. Charlesworth has completed the National Catholic Certification Program in Health Care Ethics. He retired from active medical practice in May of 2014 but continues to be active in academic medicine.

Areas of Expertise:

Dr. Phillip R. Devore actively practices dentistry in Las Vegas and he is an expert witness, case planner and evaluator to the legal profession, particularly in regard to professional liability matters. He offers advice on case viability and strategic planning for depositions and trial, and testifies in affidavits, depositions and at trial. In the last 40 years, he has testified hundreds of times in numerous states prevailing in the vast majority of his cases.

Dr. Devore graduated from UCLA in 1980, lectured there part-time for 18 years, and lectured and consulted in over thirty states, attending 1,800 dental offices. He also taught at UNLV School of Dental Medicine as a full-time Associate Professor of Clinical Sciences where he chaired the business classroom courses and was the Director of the Faculty Group Practice  in addition to his other faculty duties.

Areas of Expertise:

• Aesthetic Dentistry
• Cosmetic & Restorative Dentistry
• Dental Care Analysis
• Dental Implants
• Dentistry / Odontology
• General Dentistry

Associations & Memberships

• American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry
• Las Vegas Dentist Member of American Academy of Cosemetic Dentistry
• American Dental Association
• Nevada Dental Association
• Southern Nevada Dental Association
• Academy of General Dentistry
• Pierre Fauchard Fellow

Reasoning, Inc. provides expert testimony for trademarks, defamation, authorship attribution, and communicative malpractice related to faulty tests and surveys. Reasoning is a group of doctoral-level linguists and logicians with superior understanding of all aspects of language. We do linguistic and logical analyses of publications, newspapers, books, letters, interviews, advertisements, manuals, contracts--to identify meanings, inferences, innuendoes, bias, actual malice, damage to reputation, similarity to other documents, copyright infringement, plagiarism, breach of contract, authorship, and fraud.

As a specialist in educational testing, Dr. Habick provides expert testimony on educational practices related to fairness, bias, psychometrics, and flawed test questions or testing programs. He provides Linguistic Analysis of news reports and other communications and in the assessment of Violations of Legal, Ethical, and Professional Standards.

Dr. Habick testified as an expert witness in linguistics in the U.S. District Court, Trenton, in The United States of America v. Tyshon Bey. Dr. Habick performed linguistic analyses on defamation and trademark cases for Pisanelli-Bice, Las Vegas; Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick, Tampa; Seed Intellectual Property Law Group, Seattle, and Perkins Coie, Seattle.

Reasoning, Inc. also provided expert testimony on unfair testing, grading, and educational practices for Seals v. State of Mississippi et al.

Areas of Expertise:

Professional Affiliations
American Dialect Society (ADS)
International Association of Forensic Linguists (IAFL)

A senior clinical faculty member at Harvard Medical School, Harold J. Bursztajn, M.D., is active in patient care in medical, psychiatric and judicial education nationally. He is qualified in both state and federal courts and is nationally recognized as a distinguished impartial, clinical, ethical and forensic expert to P/D attorneys and institutions. Individual and multispecialty team consultations available.

• Informed Consent & Malpractice
• Employment Litigation: ADA, Disability, Sexual Misconduct Discrimination, Worker's Compensation
• Emotional & Physical Damages: Conscious Pain & Suffering, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Neuropsychiatry & Pain Imaging
• Standards For Experts
• Product Liability: Medical Devices & Pharmaceuticals, Toxic Tort
• Criminal Justice & Public Safety: Diminished Capacity, Drug Addiction, Competency to Confess, Death Penalty Mitigation, Workplace Safety
• Family & Custody Issues
• Testamentary & Contractual Capacity
• Professional & Organizational Ethics: Patient Care, Managed Care, Privacy
• Psychoanalysis & Cultural Perspectives

Attorney, Lawrence H. Jacobson, has been practicing in the area of Real Estate Transaction Law and Litigation for more than 50 years. Over the past 30 years, he has been sought out as an expert witness in real estate and legal malpractice disputes and lawsuits in litigation cases throughout the country. 

His firm, The Law Offices of Lawrence H. Jacobson, A Professional Corporation, is recognized as one of the nation's premier offices providing expert testimony in litigation involving all Real Estate Matters and Legal Malpractice. 

Mr. Jacobson has been engaged in the practice of law in Los Angeles since 1968. Formerly Vice President of Legal Affairs for the California Association of Realtors, Mr. Jacobson has served as a judge pro tem for the Los Angeles and Beverly Hills Municipal Court Systems and as an adjunct professor of law focusing on real estate secured transactions and administrative law. He is Past President of the Beverly Hills Bar Association. He has written and lectured extensively on business and real estate related matters. He has served on the faculty of the Graduate Realtors Institute of the California Association of Realtors and a lecturer author for the California Continuing Education of the California Bar.

Litigation Support - Mr. Jacobson offers an impressive record of success as an expert witness in real estate, business, and finance. Included among the numerous cases in which he has testified as an expert witness are disputes over the interpretation of real estate documents, real estate and mortgage brokers’ standard of care and legal malpractice related to real estate transactions and business law including issues involved in corporate finance, merger and acquisition and ethics.

Areas of Expertise:

View Lawrence Jacobson's Consulting Profile.

William A. Muñoz, Esq., is a Civil Trial Attorney, Legal Ethics Expert, and Third-Party Neutral with over 20 years of experience defending attorneys, and other professionals such as architects and engineers, real estate agents/brokers, real estate appraisers, and insurance brokers, as well as defending personal injury, toxic torts, products liability, defamation, wrongful termination / harassment, wage and hour and discrimination claims.

 Mr. Muñoz is currently a member of the California State Bar Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct (“COPRAC”) where the Committee interprets and issues opinions regarding legal ethics and the California Rules of Professional Conduct. Mr. Muñoz also serves as an arbitrator for the State Bar’s Mandatory Fee Arbitration program.

Mr. Muñoz previously served as the Chair for the Legal Malpractice Law Advisory Commission for the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization responsible for preparing and grading the legal malpractice law legal specialization examination as well as assessing the qualifications of potential applicants seeking the legal malpractice specialization designation and recertification.

Legal Malpractice Litigation Support - As a Subject Matter Expert, and with his wealth of experience, Mr. Muñoz is prepared to address the nuances of each case. His services are available to attorneys representing injured parties in the following areas:

Mr. Muñoz also serves as a Dispute Resolution Conference judge for El Dorado County Superior Court, a judge pro tem for Sacramento County Superior Court’s Settlement Conference Department, and more recently, a mediator for the Third District Court of Appeals Mediation Program. His approach is further informed by the renowned Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at Pepperdine University Caruso School of Law mediation training program and the National Conflict Resolution Center mediation training program.

An expert in his field, Mr. Muñoz has presented locally and nationally on issues of legal malpractice, conflicts of interests and legal ethics and regularly contributes a column in the Association of Defense Counsel for Northern California and Nevada’s Defense Comment entitled “The Lawyer’s Lawyer” addressing issues of legal malpractice avoidance and legal ethics.

View Muñoz Dispute Resolution's Consulting Profile.

Nancy M. McClellan, MPH, CIH, CHMM, is an award winning, Industrial Hygiene and Safety expert with over 25 years of broad international experience practicing, teaching and authoring to anticipate, recognize, evaluate, control and prevent workplace health and safety hazards in high hazard industries.

 Prior to her independent expert and consulting practice, Ms. McClellan practiced industrial hygiene management as a Board Certified Industrial Hygienist on a global scale for both AbbVie, a major producer of highly potent biopharmaceuticals and LafargeHolcim, the world’s largest building materials corporation.

She currently provides industrial hygiene and safety legal expert, management, training, and select field services to sectors such as the pharmaceutical, automotive, military, hospital, electronic, food, chemical, and commercial real estate industries. 

She is the Chair of the University of Michigan Graduate School of Public Health COHSE External Advisory Board and an international AIHA Distinguished expert lecturer.

Ms. McClellan is domestically and internationally recognized for leadership service to the IH profession for the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), the American Board of Industrial Hygiene (ABIH), the Occupational Hygiene Training Association (OHTA) and the Joint Industrial Hygiene Ethics Education (JIHEEC) Boards of Directors and Committees. She currently serves on the AIHA Executive Board of Directors.

As a result of her well-practiced ability to describe science in lay terms, Ms. McClellan was interviewed in October 2020 on the ABC Network’s Good Morning America program regarding Covid pandemic controls, as well as a number of ABC News and professional journal articles regarding the association between HVAC systems, Indoor Air Quality and the Covid pandemic to advance public and worker health protections.

Ms. McClellan has extensive expertise in Pandemic, Covid-19 Response Management, including chemical and non-chemical disinfectant exposure evaluation and real estate/facility controls.

Good Morning America Pandemic / Indoor Air Interview 

Litigation Support Goal - Nancy McClellan seeks to continue a 50/50 defense/plaintiff practice that presents challenging cases determining worker and/or public exposure to chemical, biological, physical or ergonomic hazards. Her services include thorough review, reporting, depositions, and trial testimony.

Areas of Expertise:

• Chemical and biological airborne and dermal exposure assessment and modeling
• Bioaerosol Assessment and Pandemic Control Programs 
• Indoor Air Quality and Air disinfection Technologies Evaluation
• H&S Policy and Program Development and Audits
• Highly Potent Compound Containment 
• Workplace Hazard Risk and Exposure Assessment 
• USP 800 Safe Hazardous Drug Handling Conformance
• Hearing Conservation Program Development and Controls
• Respiratory Protection Evaluation and Program Development
• Worksite Ergonomic Evaluation and Controls

View Nancy McClellan's Consulting Profile.

GRANT D. STIEFEL, ESQ. | www.grantstiefel.com | grant@litigationlimited.com

• Grant D. Stiefel, Esq. is a nationally-recognized, full time attorney fee consultant, testifying expert and the principal of Litigation Limited, a boutique legal fee consulting firm
• Mr. Stiefel has testified in nearly 100 lawsuits, including matters in federal district courts, California trial courts, JAMS/AAA arbitrations, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, State Bar courts, and attorney-client fee arbitrations
• He has qualified to testify and has testified live at trials and arbitrations as a designated attorney fee expert
• Mr. Stiefel’s methodology for reviewing, auditing and evaluating legal invoices has been cited, approved and adopted by California state and federal courts
• He has been retained as a testifying attorney fee expert by the world’s largest law firms, including Reed Smith; McDermott Will and Emery; Jones Day; Sheppard Mullin; Sidely Austin; Dykema Gossett; Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe; and Littler Mendelson, among many others
• Mr. Stiefel is a member of the California State Bar and is unique among fee experts in that he practiced law for many years at two of the world’s largest law firms (Akin Gump and K&L Gates)
• Mr. Stiefel has managed a multi-billion dollar litigation portfolio and has audited hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees from law firms nationwide since 2008 
• He has developed and implemented outside counsel billing and case management guidelines for Fortune 500 corporations
• He is a California State Bar-approved continuing legal education instructor on attorneys’ fees who has trained hundreds of executives and in-house counsel from a host of Fortune 500 corporations
• Mr. Stiefel is qualified as an attorney-client fee dispute arbitrator with the California State Bar’s Mandatory Fee Arbitration program and as a judge pro tem with the California Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles

SAMPLE ENGAGEMENTS

• Grant Stiefel was the testifying fee expert on a series of fee applications by class counsel in Jones v. Wells Fargo, on behalf of aggrieved California consumers in the first consumer class action brought under the Unruh Act.  Relying upon Mr. Stiefel's testimony regarding the reasonableness of hourly rates and overall work performed, the trial court awarded more than $25 million in attorneys' fees to class counsel
• The district court for the Central District of California adopted and approved Mr. Stiefel's methodology for identifying and quantifying block-billed, vague and redacted billing entries in cutting Plaintiff's fee request by more than sixty percent in CNS v. Planet, from $4.8 million to $1.9 million
• In Vides v. ABM Janitorial Services, the trial court reduced Plaintiff's fee request in a FEHA action by over $1 million based upon Grant Stiefel's expert testimony.  Plaintiff moved for an award of $1,578,232.50 in attorneys' fees, which the trial court reduced to $544,183.12.  Mr. Stiefel's testimony showed that the hourly rates claimed by Plaintiff's counsel were unreasonable under the circumstances, that excessive time was spent on inter-office communications, and that the matter was overstaffed

View Grant Stiefel's Consulting Profile.

Willeam A. Choby, DMD, MPA, MAGD, FICCMO, DICOI, has over 40 years of experience Dentistry and Oral Surgery. He is a Board Certified Implant Dentist that perfoms both the Surgery and the Restoration of Implant Teeth. A “Master” in the Academy of General Dentistry (MAGD), Dr. Choby has been recognized by other general dentists as a leader and an example to other dentists of the importance of quality continuing dental education to patient care. Masters have accepted the charge to keep abreast of advances in dentistry for the benefit of patients and the betterment of dentistry. Dr. Choby is also a Fellow in the International College of Cranio-Mandibular Orthopedics (FICCMO), earned a Masters of Public Administration (MPA), and is a Diplomate of the International Congress of Oral Implantologists (DICOI). He is recognized as One of America's Top Dentists by the Consumers Research Council of America. Litigation Support - Dr. Choby's expertise is frequently called upon for second opinions for quality assurance companies, peer review panels, workmen's compensation disputes, automobile accident claims, dental insurance companies, physicians, attorneys, and other dentists. He has offered his expert opinion in more than 100 dental malpractice cases, inspected over 1,100 dental offices for insurance companies, and performed over 1,000 second opinion case reviews, IMEs and peer reviews. His cases have included issues concerning:

View Dr. Choby's Consulting Profile.

“We settled the case...for $5 million. Your report played a huge role in that.  Thank you for everything!”  Nicolas H. 

Beth A. Mohr, CFE, FSA, CFCS, CAMS, CCCI, MPA, PI, is a Police Practices expert with over 30 years of sworn and non-sworn investigative experience.  Ms. Mohr has testified as an expert in numerous state and federal court proceedings, depositions, and administrative hearings in federal and state courts, including New Mexico, Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, California, and Washington State.  Ms. Mohr has testified on a variety of subjects, including police procedures, police misconduct, white-collar crime, and fraud examinations.  Her expertise has been verified by the courts via a Daubert challenge, in which Ms. Mohr was found to be qualified as an expert in police practices generally, and well as the specific areas of interviewing, interrogation, false and recanted confessions, cognitive bias, investigations and investigative failures, vice, and human trafficking.  Ms. Mohr is neutral, fair, and her opinions are rooted in provable facts, as well as academic literature, where appropriate.  She strives to balance her cases between defense and plaintiff-sided cases, and also provides habeas consulting services.  

Ms. Mohr is credentialed as a Nationally Certified Law Enforcement Instructor by the IADLEST, and is one of fewer than 150 individuals who have been nationally certified as an expert law enforcement instructor.  She is a Certified Fraud Examiner, Certified Force Science Analyst (FSA) Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), Certified Financial Crimes Specialist (CFCS) and a Certified Cyber Crimes Investigator (CCCI).  She is also a Private Investigator (PI) licensed in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California.  

Areas of Expertise:

• Police Practices and allegation of Police Misconduct
• Excessive Force, Deadly Force & Use-of-Force
• Taser, ECWs, and other uses of force intended to be less-lethal
• Interviewing, Interrogations & False and Recanted Confessions
• Police Ethics
• Investigative Failure, Cognitive Bias, Confirmation Bias
• Habeas Consulting, including death penalty cases
• False Arrest
• Failure to Train / Failure to Supervise               
• Evidence Handling
• Police Policy, SOPs
• Fraud & White-Collar Crime
• Vice & Human Trafficking
• Money-Laundering Cases
• Cryptocurrencies / Bitcoin
• Retaliation & Qui Tam
• Workplace Violence & Sexual Harassment
• Private Investigations & PI Failures

During her career with the San Diego Police Department, Ms. Mohr was awarded three Commanding Officer’s Citations, which were the highest awards offered by the San Diego Police Department for investigative acumen at the time.  After retiring from the San Diego Police Department, she conducted death penalty mitigation investigations and other complex felony investigations, including homicide and white-collar cases, for the Whatcom County, Washington, Public Defender’s Office.  This includes conducting investigations of allegations of police misconduct for the City of Albuquerque Independent Review Office. Ms. Mohr recently chaired the City of Albuquerque’s Police Oversight Board, a civilian board that was created as part of the US Department of Justice’s Consent Decree with the City of Albuquerque and the Albuquerque Police Department.

Ms. Mohr has published a chapter entitled “Skepticism”, in the newly-released book The Art of Investigation Revisited, as well as having penned articles for bar journals and other peer-reviewed publications.  Ms. Mohr has taught courses on law enforcement topics, including interviewing techniques, investigative ethics, evidence collection, financial and fraud investigations, and many other topics. Her ethics courses, investigative courses, and fraud courses are certified for law enforcement credit.

Molly S. Cobb is an experienced Equine Professional with over 40 years of experience in many aspects of the equine industry and 30 years of teaching experience. Molly has run and managed her own boarding/lesson facility for 26 years. She has developed lesson and camp programs, as well as trained people and horses. Molly is a USDF Bronze and Silver medalist, a Certified Instructor. 

Larry Lowenthal is a nationally recognized Real Estate Expert Witness who has been retained by dozens of attorneys across the United States since 2003 to analyze failed or troubled real estate transactions. 

Based in North Central Florida, he is also retained to help with substantial commission or fee disputes.

Insurance Defense attorneys retain Larry when their broker clients are charged, while plaintiffs and their attorneys retain him when charging real estate brokers with improper conduct.