Medical Specialists Expert Witnesses: 114

Bankole A. Johnson, DSc, MD, MBChB, MPhil, FRCPsych, DFAPA, Dip-ABAM, Dip-ABDA, FACFEI, is a leading Neuroscientist and respected global authority in both Psychiatry and Neuroscience. His considerable education and expertise date to the 1970s, when he received his first general studies diploma.

Dr. Johnson earned his Medicinae Baccalaureum et Chirurgiae Baccalaureum (an M.D. equivalent) from the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He also received his UK Board Certification in Psychiatry from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, his Master of Philosophy in Neuropsychiatry at the University of London, and his Doctorate in Medicine from the University of Glasgow (coursework at the University of Oxford). He also received a Doctor of Science from the University of Glasgow, the highest doctoral degree a British university can award.

In addition to these qualifications, Dr. Johnson has also received United States certifications from the American College of Forensic Examiners Institute, the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and the American Board of Addiction Medicine. 

Video Introduction: Neuroscience Expert Witness Dr. Bankole Johnson

Today, Bankole Johnson is a board-certified psychiatrist and physician throughout Europe and the United States. He is a respected collegiate authority in his field at a leading university in the United States. Dr. Johnson is a leading authority on the effects of abused drugs, including alcohol, on the brain and how this affects behavior, especially that related to the commission of a crime. He is a national expert on the treatment of opioid addiction as well as on assessing medical malpractice and insurance claims. Dr. Johnson is also a national expert on the effects of diseases of the brain, mental illness, mental disorders, and aberrant behaviors on testamentary capacity. He also is a national expert on assessing disability as a result of mental disorders, mental illness, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Litigation Support - Dr. Johnson provides expert witness services for cases involving all aspects of Addiction Medicine (e.g., alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and other opioid and substance abuse) as well as diseases of the brain and brain disorders that affect mental capacity. He is experienced as an expert witness for medical malpractice, capital cases, and major crimes. Dr. Johnson's services are available to attorneys for plaintiff and defendant and include medical record review, written reports, depositions, and trial testimony when needed.

Areas of Expertise:

View Dr. Johnson's Consulting Profile.

Jeffrey A. Sugar, MD has been a practicing Psychiatrist for over 20 years. Dr. Sugar is board certified both in Child and General Psychiatry. He is Past President of the Southern California Society of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Dr. Sugar  is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at USC, and has been an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA. Dr. Sugar is the Director of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Trauma Program at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, CA where he sees patients, teaches psychiatry, and performs research. He is Attending Psychiatrist in both Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Adult Psychiatry Outpatient Clinics at USC. He teaches child and general psychiatrists-in-training and medical students on topics ranging from Trauma, Adversity, and Dissociation to Psychotherapy theory and methods.

Dr. Sugar was the founding director of the Hathaway Children’s Clinical Research Institute where he performed funded research on the effects of interpersonal child trauma. Dr. Sugar has presented at national and international meetings on child and adolescent Trauma and Dissociation. Director, Child Psychiatry Trauma Program at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine .. Dr. Sugar has been worked with the legal industry since 1988. Qualified in Superior court, he has been retained over 40 times as an expert in a broad range of child and general psychiatric cases, for both Plaintiff and Defense. His services include:

• Consultation Regarding Psychiatric Injury, Diagnosis, Treatment
• Record Review and Opinion
• Psychiatric Interview and Mental Status Evaluation
• Expert testimony

Dr. Sugar's litigation support is available to attorneys for both Plaintiff and Defense. His Areas of Expertise include:

Professional Training:

• MD: University of California, San Francisco
• General Psychiatry: Harbor-UCLA, Torrance, California
• Child Psychiatry: UCLA-Neuropsychiatric Institute
• Chief Fellow: UCLA

View Dr. Sugar's Consulting Profile.

James H. Reich, MD, MPH, is a board-certified Forensic Psychiatrist with extensive civil psychiatry experience who has done hundreds of evaluations.

After getting his MD from the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver, Dr. Reich earned his MPH at Yale University and did his psychiatric residency at UC Davis. Dr. Reich has held academic positions at Yale, Iowa, Harvard, and Brown Universities.  Currently, he has teaching appointments at the professor level at both UCSF and Stanford University. Throughout his career, he has published over a hundred peer-reviewed publications. 

Litigation Support - Dr. Reich’s services are available for civil and some criminal law cases. Clients are assured of his personal dedication to each case. He does high quality research, expert evaluations, writes a solid report, and will testify well. Dr. Reich has been deposed over 50 times.

Areas of Expertise:

Presentations - As faculty at the Stanford Forensic Fellowship program, Dr. Reich has given two talks to the group. On October 27, 2023, he presented, "What Gets Psychiatrists and other Medical Professionals into Problems with the Law or Regulators." On January 19, 2024, he presented a talk on Psychiatric Disability to the same group. Dr. Reich is also supervising a fellow on his project on competency issues in older physicians.

James Apesos, MD, FACS, is Board Certified in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, General Surgery, and Hand Surgery, allowing him to deal with most any and all potential medical malpractice situations.

Dr. Apesos has decades of experience operating a busy private plastic surgery practice, training surgeons, managing emergency rooms, and hospital facilities. He has a wide experience dealing with both pediatric and adult surgery from congenital to reconstructive to cosmetic.

Education / Training:

• University of Pennsylvania, BS 
• Georgetown University School of Medicine, MD
• Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, General Surgery Chief Resident
• University of Virginia School of Medicine Chief Resident Plastic Surgery
• Certified Ohio State Police Officer 
• Certified Ohio State Firefighter

Litigation Support - Dr. Apesos is an expert witness for Medical Malpractice cases involving Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, including all cosmetic surgery, pediatric surgery, hand surgery, burn surgery, breast surgery, and cancer surgery. He has special skill in complications of surgery and post-surgery deaths.

Dr. Apesos has been providing services to the legal community for 30 years. He has been retained in 30 cases and been deposed over 25 times. A punctual strategist, he is adept at quickly assessing legal cases, cutting through medical jargon, and determining the merits of each case. Dr. Apesos' services include medical record review, thorough reporting, depositions, and trial testimony as needed for both plaintiff and defendant.

Areas of Expertise:

Spine Surgery and Spine Medicine Consultant

The concepts of evidence-based medicine have been the cornerstone of Dr. Dillin’s education during his spine surgery fellowship in Neurosurgery and Orthopaedic Surgery and the format for decision-making in his subsequent practice. The critical analytic features inherent in the ‘best evidence’ approach to patients have permeated his writing and his lectures, allowing flexible adaptation as the science has changed. Since July 1985, Dr. Dillin has been exclusively devoted to clinical spine, interventional spine, and spine surgery practice. The combination of clinical critical thinking in conjunction with evidence-based medicine practice, allows spine specialty focus on any Independent Medical Evaluations or Medical-Legal Reviews. He is in clinical practice performing spine surgery, spine interventions, and evaluating patients with spine conditions. He is licensed in California, Texas, Arizona, Florida and Nevada. Dr. Dillin was a former partner at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic. I spent 2022-2023 in clinical practice and at the Effective Writing in Health Care program sponsored by Harvard Medical School. The program encompassed online and onsite (Boston) attendance. My study subject was the history of the expert witness in general, and more specifically, the medical expert witness. My capstone project, from the ‘Writing for the Public’, division is attached. This is the narrative account of “The Trial of the Medical Expert Witness.”

Litigation Support - For over 35 years, Dr. Dillin has traveled to refine and acquire the technical skills invested in Spine Surgery and Spine Interventions. His expert witness activity is embodied in his Harvard Capstone, "The Trial of the Medical Expert Witness." Dr. Dillin offers Independent Medical Evaluations and/or Medical-Legal Review, thorough reporting, depositions, and trial testimony as needed.

Areas of Expertise:

Erik B. Hysinger, MD, MSCE, is a board certified Pediatrician and Pediatric Pulmonologist and Associate Professor in the Division of Pulmonary Medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center (ranked #1 by US News) with more than 10 years of clinical experience in Pediatrics.

Litigation Support - Dr. Hysinger has been participating in medical litigation for the past five years, working with both plaintiffs and defendants. His services include medical record review, thorough reporting, depositions, and trial testimony as needed.

Areas of Expertise:

Background Experience - Dr. Hysinger completed his undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and remained at Vanderbilt for medical school and Pediatrics training.  Following residency, Dr. Hysinger completed his Pediatric Pulmonology training at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia where he also obtained a Master's of Clinical Epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Hysinger joined the faculty at Cincinnati Children's Hospital in 2016 where he founded and serves as the Co-Director of the Cincinnati Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia Center and spends approximately 75% of his time in direct patient care.  In addition to his clinical work, he is also very active in clinical research and has published widely in multiple high impact journals such as The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine and Chest, among many others, with over 50 publications.  Dr. Hysinger has lectured on his research and clinical work nationally and internationally, hosted national and international conferences and courses,  and is funded by the National Institute of Health and Patient Centered Outcome Research Institute.

Expert Witness: Retained in Washington, D.C., and over 25 states as an expert in hospital administration who could render opinion after assessing medical records, hospital policies and procedures, medical staff bylaws and regulations, JCAHO standards, depositions, etc. Served as Expert Witness for Plaintiff and Defense. 

Consultant: Has assisted hospitals and health systems with accelerating their performance improvement efforts. Speaks, writes and consults on ethical issues in health care. 

Background Highlights:

• Consultant, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the health system.
• Executive Director of two academic medical centers: Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, Stanford University Hospital and Clinics at Stanford.
• Past chairman of the national advisory board for the University of Chicago’s Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.
• An author of over 175 publications, he has written articles for USA Today, Health Management Quarterly, Trustee, Health Progress, the Journal of Health Administration Education, Frontiers of Health Services Management, Bioethics Forum, Modern Healthcare, the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Stanford Medicine, and Healthcare Executive among others.
• Co-editor of Management Mistakes in Healthcare: Identification, Correction, and Prevention, published by Cambridge University Press in 2005.
• Co-editor of Managing Ethically: An Executive's Guide, published by Health Administration Press in 2001, and a second edition, Managing Healthcare Ethically: An Executive's Guide was published in 2010.
• Fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, a past member of its Leadership Advisory Committee, and a consultant on health care management ethics since 1994.
• Served as a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Center for Biomedical Ethics.
• Recipient of American Hospital Association's Award of Honor in 2009 and an Albert Schweitzer Leadership Award in 2012.
• Faculty appointments held at Harvard, UCLA, Stanford, Emory, the University of California, and Seton Hall University.
• Bachelor of Science, Master of Public Health, and Doctor of Public Health degrees are from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Thomas J. Berger was board certified in 1981 as a cardiac surgeon by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery and has been involved, as an expert, in over 300 medical malpractice cases. Most of this experience has been since 1998, when his firm, Heart of the Matter Expertise, began to gain recognition, within the legal community, as the premier expert witness service for cases involving cardiac surgery and cardio-thoracic disease.

Areas of Expertise:

• Cardiovascular Surgery
• Cardiology
• Surgery - General
• Thoracic Surgery

Mission Statement

To see that the truth about every case, in which an associate of Heart of the Matter Expertise becomes involved, is uncovered and understood, whether this means assuring justice for a poorly treated patient or protecting the precious reputation of an unfairly accused physician.

• Catastrophic Medical Case Management - Traumatic Brain Injury, Acquired Brain Injury, Spinal Cord Injury, Amputation, Soft Tissue Injury, Chronic Pain, Burns, Cerebral Palsy & Developmental Delay, Chronic Respiratory Conditions, Visual & Hearing Impaired
• Life Care Planning - Comprehensive Record Review and supportive documentation / Case Analysis, Case Summary Chronology, Clinical Interview and History with Patient, Medical-Legal Research, Assessment of Future Medical / Rehabilitation Needs
• Legal Nurse Consulting

Dr. Kelly S. Harvey, MS, PT, DPT, TPS, CLCP, CFCE, is a Medical Legal consultant with 27 years of clinical leadership experience and acute, rehabilitation, and concierge practice expertise. Dr. Harvey has been recognized for demonstrating a natural aptitude for Forensic Analysis and Catastrophic Case Management as well as for creating Medical Cost Projections and Life Care Plans.

Dr. Harvey founded Harvey Medical Legal Consulting in 2012 to offer her orthopedic trauma, spinal cord injury, and traumatic brain injury expertise. She maintains a private practice, as well as certifications as a Life Care Planner, Industrial Ergonomist, Functional Capacity Evaluator, Return to Work, Work Readiness, and Work Hardening Evaluator.  Dr. Harvey holds Therapeutic Pain Science Specialty certification that allows her to autonomously evaluate and treat Pain Management patients.

Litigation Support - Dr. Harvey serves the legal industry as a Forensic Analyst, Damages Expert, and Medical Consultant. She is an Industry Best Practice Advisor and Expert Witness in the fields of Physical Therapy, Rehabilitation, and Pain Management. Dr. Harvey offers services to attorneys representing plaintiff and defendant. She provides medical chart review, thorough reporting, depositions, arbitration, and trial testimony as needed. Dr. Harvey has been deposed and/or testified in a court of law over 48 times.

Areas of Expertise:

Education / Training:

• Doctorate of Physical Therapy, International Spine and Pain Institute;
• Therapeutic Pain Specialist, International Spine and Pain Institute;
• Master of Physical Therapy, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; 
• BA in Psychology and Biology, University of California at Santa Barbara

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

• Criminal Court Evaluations - Competence to Stand Trial, Assessment of Criminal Responsibility, NGRI Assessments
• Civil Court Evaluations - Personal Injury with Psychiatric symptoms, Brain Injury with Psychiatric symptoms, Malpractice related questions
• Family Court Evaluations - Involuntary Commitment, Guardianship, Testamentary Capacity, Undue Influence, Contractual Capacity, Fitness to Parent, Child Custody
• Third Party Forensic Evaluations - Fitness for Duty, Return to Work, Disability, ADA Accommodations, Medical Necessity, Independent Psychiatric Evaluations

Terence K. Gray, DO, is a Harvard trained Anesthesiologist / Interventional and Multidisciplinary Pain Management Specialist. Currently the Medical Director at Mercy Pain Management Center, he is responsible for assisting in the leadership, physician oversight, and management of a large multidisciplinary pain management program. Dr. Gray served as a physician leader and partner in a large multistate anesthesia practice in southern New England and has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and Tufts University School of Medicine. He is a diplomate of the American College of Osteopathic Anesthesiologists. Along with treatment modalities for spine and radicular back pain, Dr. Gray has a special interest in treating pain associated with sacroiliac dysfunction, Piriformis pain, joint bursitis, and arthritis (in particular genicular nerve blocks for knee pain), as well as post hernia repair and abdominal surgery neuropathic pain. Dr. Gray was awarded 1 United States Patent for a Ventilating Tube and Stylet System patent number, and has 3 patents pending. He also holds 1 United States Copyright. Dr. Gray is currently an Adjunct Professor of Clinical Research at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine. Litigation Support - Dr. Gray has been a medical expert consultant for several years. He provides medical forensic reviews and expert testimony in the areas of Anesthesiology, Pain Management, and Medical Malpractice. His services include medical record review, written reports, depositions, and trial testimony. Areas of Expertise:

CV Available Upon Request.

Wayne H. Grant, PharmD, is a Clinical Pharmacist with over 30 years of pharmacy experience working in or within various practice settings—retail, long-term care, home infusion, sterile products, corrections, hospice, specialty, and hospitals.  

Dr. Grant has prepared and delivered educational programs to physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals based on his extensive experience in multiple disease states. Programs include topics such as Pain Management, COPD, and Motor Neuron Diseases.

Serving as an integral member of multiple pharmacy and therapeutics committees, he has promoted evidence-based interventions while driving quality initiatives and building a highly collaborative consortium among healthcare professionals.  

Earning his Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Florida, his Master of Business Administration for Kent State University, and his Bachelor of Science from Ohio Northern University highlights Dr. Grant's drive for education, understanding, and application of pharmacy services.  

Dr. Wayne Grant on Consulting with Attorneys

Litigation Support - Dr. Grant is an expert in pharmacy practice. His expertise in long-term, institutional, infusion, and retail practice allow for an extensive understanding of the various pharmacy sectors. He is responsible for pharmacotherapeutic management, medication safety and efficacy and drug information all which follow federal, state, and local laws. He has provided a variety of expert witness services on behalf of legal professionals, including attorney consultation, case review, case opinion, and written case opinion. 

Areas of Medication Expertise:

View Dr. Grant's Consulting Profile.

Dr. Joel L.Goldberg, MD, FACEP, is a Board-Certified Emergency Medicine Specialist with expertise in the fields of Emergency Medicine, Urgent Care, Occupational Medicine and Emergency Medical Services. He has more than 20 years of experience as a practicing emergency physician in academic, urban, community and rural hospital departments, as well as teaching hospitals. 

Dr. Goldberg is an Assistant Clinical Professor at Homer Stryker School of Medicine  He was a Major in the United States Air Force and has experience in Air Medical Transport.

Litigation Support - As an Expert Witness in Emergency Medicine,  Dr. Goldberg is qualified to address questions relating to standard of care, medical malpractice, negligence, personal injury, and wrongful death.  He has reviewed and given expert opinions and case reviews on malpractice cases since 2018, and has worked for both plaintiff and defense.  Dr. Goldberg provides credible and clearly understandable testimony for both plaintiff and defense that informs judges and jury on pertinent medical facts and science. 

Areas of Expertise: