Dr. Thomas Maronick has provided both plaintiff and defense litigators with marketing and consumer expertise for over 25 years. Prior to that he was the in-house marketing expert at the FTC. Since leaving the FTC in 1997, Dr. Maronick has been qualified as an expert in numerous federal and state courts, providing expert reports, affidavits, and testimony on marketing, advertising, and consumer behavior matters.
Dr. Maronick has designed and implemented over 300 consumer surveys for litigation and/or policy related strategies, using virtually every survey research methodology, including mall-intercept studies, telephone and mail surveys, and studies using the internet and consumer mail panels. Dr. Maronick has testified (deposition/trial) over 75 times in the past five years and is the author of research of the use of surveys in litigation.
Eric Forister, PhD, is an expert Economist with testifying experience on market definition, market power, and damages. His expertise includes applying advanced statistical techniques to datasets, synthesizing information from documents, and designing and evaluating surveys. A Senior Economist at Econ One, he focuses on relevant questions to tackle complex issues with an efficient and effective style of communication. Dr. Forister also has extensive experience consulting on issues including royalty rates, irreparable harm, sampling, survey design, common impact, and materiality.
Ideal Client Engagement: For litigation-related matters, an ideal engagement would be providing an opinion on economics, damages, market power, or market definition; or providing pre-litigation advice on the economics of potential claims, or the merits of a survey. For non-litigation matters, an ideal engagement would be helping to explain the economics of different business models or consulting to those considering buying or starting an optometry office.
Experience: Dr. Forister has acted in a support/consulting role on over 100 matters. His support work has been a mix of plaintiff and defense work. Dr. Forister has designed and evaluated surveys for IP and marketing cases and worked on a wide range of other matters, including:
Dr. Larry Chiagouris has a rare combination serving as a senior Fortune 500 executive and as an accomplished academician. He has provided expert testimony and written opinions on damages, marketing, advertising, intellectual property issues (including the use of survey research) for plaintiffs & defendants at major national & local firms.
Dr. Chiagouris brings extensive experience as a Senior Marketing, Branding and Research Executive responsible for directing major assignments for companies such as AT&T, Campbell Soup, Kraft, Miller Brewing, Peugeot, Pfizer, Prudential and Visa. He has a Ph.D. in Marketing, is Past Chairman, Advertising Research Foundation and Former Director of the American Marketing Association.
Experience Summary:
Experience evenly divided between plaintiff and defendant engagements over 25 cases
Several cases include elements of intellectual property issues
Majority of cases involve elements of consumer behavior or survey research
Majority of cases involve elements of advertising related strategies and tactics
Majority of cases involve elements of Internet related tactics
Majority of cases involve written opinions and depositions
Written and oral testimony in several Federal District Court jurisdictions
Engaged by both large multinational law firms and small boutique firms
Class action cases evenly divided between plaintiffs and defendants
Selected by Agency Magazine as one of 10 best and brightest researchers.
Survey research is used to provide greater levels of understanding in a wide variety of disputes. Issues such as consumer confusion, misleading advertising claims, disparagement, copyright infringement and trademark disputes can be better assessed as a result of developing and executing survey research. The purpose of this monograph is to aid attorneys in understanding what research standards and guidelines might be relied upon in their use of survey research.
