MARYLAND LEAD POISONING DEFENDANT UPDATE: Experts Must Have Expertise And Facts To Testify

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Charles Jerome Ware is a principal in the Maryland-based national lead-based paint poisoning defense law firm of Charles Jerome Ware, LLC, Attorneys and Counselors.  Should the reader have specific questions or desire an initial courtesy consultation, Attorney Ware can be reached at (410) 720-6129 or (410) 730-5016, or emailed at charlesjeromeware@msn.com.  He can help you.
Numerous commentators have suggested that in certain circumstances in Baltimore lead-based paint poisoning cases are "indefensible."  I respectfully disagree.  Properly litigated lead paint cases should, and can, provide defendant landlords, etc., with proper defenses.  With the high volume of lead cases filed in Maryland (and in particular, Baltimore) every year, a helpful number of these cases are appealed to Maryland's appellate courts.
One of these recent decisions and opinions addresses the important issue of the need for qualified expert witnesses in these cases to have both the necessary expertise as well as supporting facts to testify:
City Homes, Inc. v. Hazelwood, 210 Md. App. 615, 63 A.3d 713 (2013), cert. denied, 432 Md. 468, 69 A.3d 476 (2013). 
Experts must have expertise and supporting facts to testify. In Hazelwood, the Court of Special Appeals outlined the lack of qualifications and insufficient factual basis of an expert who was to offer opinions regarding alleged injury from childhood lead poisoning as well as the source of the lead ingestion. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the "expert" M.D.’s testimony because the doctor had never evaluated,
diagnosed or monitored the progress of children diagnosed with elevated lead levels, had never been involved in any environmental tests dealing with the presence of lead, was not
a Maryland certified Lead Risk Assessor, had never published any articles related to lead nor delivered any lectures on lead ingestion, did not examine Plaintiff nor performed a medical or nutritional history of Plaintiff, could not recall performing a differential diagnosis on a pediatric patient in which he had determined that the symptoms were due to lead ingestion, and could not cite a single instance in which he identified “source.”
The Court of Special Appeals held that the doctor's exclusion was not an abuse of discretion.
The Court also opined, in dicta, that an environmental expert must have knowledge as to how the XRF lead-testing machine was actually operated at a subject property if he was to testify regarding that testing. The Court warned that general knowledge of how an XRF machine is typically used would be insufficient to support testimony regarding specific testing.