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Several potential expert witnesses will appear in federal court this week in a civil fraud case pending against five former Qwest officials, including former chief executive Joe Nacchio.  Hearings will be held from Tuesday to Thursday to determine whether the experts will be allowed to testify during trial. The potential witnesses are Sharon K. Black, Sally L. Hoffman, Elliot Lesser and Scott C. Chandler, according to court documents.

Black and Chandler would testify as telecom experts for the defense, said attorney Kevin Evans, who represents co-defendant James Kozlowski, a former Qwest accountant. Hoffman and Lesser would testify for the Securities and Exchange Commission as accounting experts.

The SEC accuses Nacchio, Kozlowski, former Qwest president Afshin Mohebbi, former chief financial officer Robert Woodruff and former accountant Frank Noyes of orchestrating a fraud that inflated the Denver company's revenue by $3 billion from 1999 to 2002.

Shelton-based Health Net of the Northeast Inc. surprised state officials and regulators Wednesday when it admitted private information on 450,000 Connecticut residents has been missing for about a half-year.  According to the company and state regulators, an unencrypted portable disk drive containing personal information on past Health Net clients and providers disasppeared from the Shelton office in May, but not reported until now.

The company said the breach was not reported because it took a long time to conduct a detailed forensic investigation to determine what information is missing. According to state officials, the disk drive contained health information, Social Security numbers, bank account numbers and other personal information on members and providers dating to 2002.

Although the company said a special program is needed to view the documents, Tarek Sobh, a computer engineering expert and dean of the University of Bridgeport's School of Engineering, said that's not much protection.

For more, see connpost.com.

A New Jersey state appellate court has ruled that information from a GPS tracking device placed in the vehicle of a suspect can be not admitted as evidence during a trial unless there is expert testimony on the information's accuracy.  Investigators from the Somerset County Prosecutor's Office placed a GPS unit in a vehicle in 2005 to track Eric Pittman in a seven-month undercover drug investigation.

The prosecution sought to have the GPS information admitted into Pittman's trial. But the information was challenged by Pittman's lawyer, Steven Altman, who argued more expert testimony needed to be heard about the reliability of the GPS unit and if investigators had used the device correctly. 

The prosecution had initially argued that expert testimony was not needed because of the general acceptance of GPS technology, but Superior Court Judge Edward Coleman said a representative of the GPS's unit manufacturer, Orion, should be called to testify about the device.

Excerpted from mycentraljersey.com.

The intellectual property trial between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC, Shanghai, China) began Wednesday in  Alameda County Superior Court.  The SMIC attorney said he will call a series of technology experts to show that what TSMC claims to be trade secrets are in reality process-related information that is readily available within the industry's published literature, with ion implant recipes as a promised example to be provided later in the trial. 

David Steuer of the Wilson, Sonsini said he will show evidence that "TSMC wanted to destroy SMIC and pick up the pieces" in an acquisition of SMIC. "Why? Because SMIC is in China, and in China TSMC cannot open up an operation with leading technology" due to Taiwan government technology transfer restrictions.  "This case is all about China," he concluded.

Excerpted from semiconductor.net.

Jurors were not convinced that a former Forsyth County, GA, Sheriff's deputy was not guilty of viewing child pornography on his work and home computers.  A federal jury found Milton Scott Pruitt guilty July 22 on two counts of receiving child pornography. Witnesses for the prosecution had previously argued that Pruitt used his work-issued account to tap into the county server to look at images of child pornography kept in another investigator's case file.

Tami Loehrs, a computer forensics expert for the defense, testified that she did not find images of child pornography on Pruitt's county-issued laptop computer. No evidence that Pruitt had downloaded the images was presented, but witnesses said the officer opened the files in March 2007.  Pruitt was fired from the sheriff's office in May 2007.

Excerpted from ForsythNews.com.

The second full trial of a US peer-to-peer file swapper begins next week.  Joel Tenenbaum, a Boston College grad student, will face RIAA lawyers who are fresh from a $1.92 million victory in the Jammie Thomas-Rasset case and eager to go 2-0 in such prosecutions.  The record label companies want willful statutory damages of between $750 and $150,000 per infringement against Tenenbaum for 30 songs.

Iowa State computer science professor Doug Jacobson will testify as a computer expert while the defense has Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson.  The defense expert will argue that the 816 songs in Tenenbaum's KaZaA share folder back in 2004 were simply a "fair use" of the recording industry's protected work. 

Excerpted from ArsTechnia.com.

A federal judge Thursday stripped class-action status from the "Vista Capable" lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. but will allow the plaintiffs to continue to sue the company separately. ComputerWorld.com reports: 

Not surprisingly, Microsoft applauded the news. "We're pleased that the court granted our motion to decertify the class, leaving only the claims of six individuals," said Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster in an e-mail late Wednesday. "We look forward to presenting our case to the jury, should the plaintiffs elect to pursue their individual claims."

U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman said the plaintiffs' economics expert witness, University of Washington Dr. Keith Leffler, did not, or was unable to, come up with any data to support the price inflation theory. Leffler had estimated that Microsoft would have to come up with as much as $8.5 billion to settle accounts with the customers affected by its 2006 "Vista Capable" marketing program.

An Oakland pilot program lets clients, attorneys, expert witnesses use phones and video to reduce travel expenses reports Detroit News.

The second phase will focus on video court appearances that would allow, for example, a prisoner to sit in a cell in the Upper Peninsula and be examined and cross examined by a prosecutor and defense lawyer in real time via video before a jury. Such a move would eliminate the expense of transporting the prisoner and providing security for that prisoner in the courthouse, among other costs.

"Video is the future of 21st century trials," Andrews said. "We are a pioneer in the area. Oakland County will be one of the first counties to move ahead in this area."

On Thursday, Andrews gathered a group of prominent trial and defense attorneys to his courtroom to demonstrate a telephonic conference call in which two attorneys role-played arguing a motion. The case took less than three minutes, Andrews said, and no participants had to leave their offices. All court proceedings done via phone or video would be part of the official court record, and the program is voluntary...To make the program work, attorneys and other parties would need to have high-quality Internet connections and a video conferencing room.

An Oakland pilot program lets clients, attorneys, expert witnesses use phones and video to reduce travel expenses reports Detroit News. 

Attorneys with cases in Oakland County Circuit Court will be able to argue motions by telephone and eventually have witnesses and experts testify on camera from remote locations as part of a pilot program intended to save money. The court is offering the new service to attorneys and the public under the Judge On-Line program.

The program is expected to save time and money for clients and their attorneys by reducing travel to and from the courthouse and eliminating costs for out-of-state witnesses and experts which often run into the thousands. Oakland Circuit Judge Steven Andrews, who is leading the test program along with six other circuit judges, said the first phase allows telephonic conferences for motions, pretrials, scheduling and status conference and other proceedings for a simple fee of $30.

Waste Management filed a case against SAP in March claiming an enterprise resource planning implementation was badly handled. SAP hopes to delay the trial and accuses Waste Management of producing voluminous documents but not the most critical.  WM replied that SAP is involved in failed implementation cases often enough to use the same motions and experts.   NewYorkTimes.com reports:

In a filing in Harris County, Texas District Court earlier this month, SAP asked the court to delay the trial until February 2010 due to the complexity of the case. The vendor also alleges Waste Management has not behaved in good faith during the discovery process...

"These types of lawsuits, arising from defective software and failed implementation, are routine for SAP," Waste Management said. "There are standard motions it files and it uses the same types of expert witnesses. ... There is no reason the case cannot be discovered and tried in 2009.