Expert Witness

Qualified testimony is paramount to a successful lawsuit. I offer expert witness services to assist in cases of product liability, personal injury, and patent infringement as they relate to plastics manufacturing and subsequent use of plastics products.

What distinguishes my services from those of other providers is that I am a full-time consultant that works daily in the industry and have extensive experience with the materials, machines, and processes used. I am therefore able to analyze details of the case from the view of practitioners of the trade with a clear understanding of all aspects, not just the narrow perspective of a highly-qualified but inexperienced academic.

My experience includes all forms of blow molding and injection molding, packaging, and related machinery. I have written numerous technical reports involving personal injury and death as well as product failure in the field. I have testified at jury trials, depositions, and binding arbitration. During my latest experience I successfully assisted in defending the patent of KHS/Norgren against claims by Seitz that tried to invalidate it. Here is the judgement: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2014/14.html. From the judgement:
“Accordingly, the relevant expert evidence was that of Mr Ottmar Brandau, called by the Defendants. Mr Brandau is a mechanical engineer who spent several years in the late 1980s and the 1990s in North America working on product development and servicing of SBM machines. Since 1997, he has worked as an independent consultant in the blow moulding industry: his clients include both machine manufacturers and bottle manufacturers and he therefore works with all the major brands of SBM machines. He wrote the “Stretch Blow Moulding Handbook”, the first comprehensive guide to SBM, of which the first edition was published in 2003. I found him to be an impressive and careful witness.”

I employ forensic science to failure analysis and am able to find whether material choice, product design, the used process conditions, or other factors such as misuse were responsible for the failure. Evidently I know Good Manufacturing Practices in the industry and can determine if they were followed when a particular product was made. This is often important as there are grey zones in all legal matters that only experts with a full understanding of all factors are able to penetrate and bring out the relevant issues.