Message from the Chairs

Welcome to the Expert Witnesses Committee website. In beginning a new bar year, we have some new faces and new assignments on our committee. One of our Co-Chairs for the past two years, Jeff Kroll, has been elected to serve on the Council of the Section of Litigation. Although we will miss Jeff’s hard work with our committee, we will certainly take advantage of his influential role in the Section’s leadership. Diane Sumoski returns as a Co-Chair for our committee. Diane is with Carrington Coleman in Dallas, and handles a broad range of business litigation in state and federal court. Joining Diane as a Committee Co-Chair is Art Justice, with Turner Padget in its Florence, S.C. office. Art practices primarily in the employment, professional liability, and business torts areas. He has served as our web editor for the last few years and looks forward to continuing to serve our members in his new role as Co-Chair. John Bogart, who previously served as our Membership Subcommittee Chair, has agreed to become a web editor. John is with Howrey, LLP in Salt Lake City. He focuses primarily on private antitrust litigation and complex civil matters. We also welcome Randy Kim with Brune & Richard in San Francisco, who has agreed to act as Co-Editor with John. Randy has represented clients in securities, professional liability, antitrust, class actions, and appellate matters. We look forward to John’s and Randy’s wide range of experience to help us move our website forward.

We also look forward to continuing to work with Veronica Gomez and Wendy Gerwick Couture as Co-Chairs of our newsletter. Joining them is John Strasburger at Weil Gotshal in its Houston office. John has experience in representing companies in all areas of complex litigation as well as manufacturers in automobile product liability cases. Veronica is just beginning a new job as in-house counsel, and Wendy is also just beginning a new job with a small firm in Olympia, Washington, practicing in the areas of family law and employment law. We also want to mention Joan Archer and Bernie Hawkins, our Program Subcommittee Co-Chairs. Joan is with Lathrop & Gage in Kansas City and practices in the area of intellectual property litigation. Bernie is with Nelson Mullins, in the Columbia, S.C. office. Bernie has experience in all aspects of environmental law, toxic tort, and pharmaceutical/drug and medical device litigation.

As you can see, our committee leadership brings a breadth of experience in many areas of litigation, across a wide range of practices. We hope that in the coming year we can not only provide you with valuable membership benefits, but entice you to join us in moving our committee and the Section forward. In that regard, we sincerely welcome your participation. We are always looking for ideas and contributions, whether it is helping us plan programs and find interesting speakers, look forward at emerging issues, add content to our website, or plan and write articles for our newsletter. The more involved you are, the more you get out of it. In addition, as you see, active members of our committee are from coast to coast, and in between. Join us at Section and ABA meetings, where we work just as hard on our social skills as our litigation skills. We would love for you to join us at the Section Annual Conference in April in Washington, D.C. Look for announcements in the future about that meeting and our committee’s participation. If you are interested in working with us, please contact Diane or Art.

Diane M. Sumoski
Arthur E. Justice, Jr.
Co-Chairs, Expert Witnesses Committee