Tuesday, February 15, 2011

David P. Callet, Esq. and Akin Gump's Ironic Use of Expert Testimony

David P. Callet, Esq. is a trial attorney specializing in large product liability, toxic tort, medical device, patent and intellectual property litigation. He currently practices at Greenberg Traurig, LLP.  He has extensive experience with complex civil cases, both state and federal, and in proceedings before administrative agencies. He has also litigated precedent-setting labor cases involving the Railway Labor Act, and has broad experience in appellate courts.

David Callet is an acknowledged leader and lecturer on the use of technology in the practice of law and an authority on Daubert challenges to expert testimony.

While I worked at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld (June 1988 to October 1991) David Callet was a senior attorney of the major client to which I was assigned as a paralegal: Eastern Airlines.  In fact during the period May to June 1988 I worked in an office adjacent to his.  Both David P. Callet and Dennis M. Race were employed in Akin Gump's Litigation practice group under R. Bruce McLean.


On October 29, 1991 my employment at Akin Gump was terminated by Dennis Race.  The firm alleged that it had determined, in an ex parte consultation with a practicing psychiatrist (who had never met me), that a harassment complaint I had lodged against my coworkers was the product of a psychiatric "disorder" that might dispose me to become violent.

Mr. Callet, I have a question about a Daubert challenge.  What does the Daubert Standard say about the relevance and reliability of Cartoon Physics as it applies to an employee who has accrued an outstanding employment record over the previous 3 1/2 years but has been determined to have been retroactively psychotic and unemployable from a time period even before he was hired by virtue of an ex parte psychiatric opinion offered in violation of the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater rule?   Is it true that according to the laws of cartoon physics (which is funnier than real world experience and therefore applicable**), such an expert opinion is relevant and reliable in concluding that the seemingly outstanding employee in question was in fact psychotic and unfit for employment even before he was hired?
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**Under the well-known Standard of Cartoon Physics the laws of the District of Columbia and the United States are applicable in the District of Columbia unless it is funnier otherwise.

6 comments:

  1. I have nothing against Mr. Callet. I just like irony more than I like Mr. Callet.

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  2. From Significant Moments:

    His schoolfellows cannot have found it easy to cope with these alternating bouts of irascibility and exuberance, and the stupid ones among them must have detested him for his mordant sarcasm.
    Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.

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  3. Akin Gump Response to Interrogatories:

    Thereafter, Mr. Lassman and another partner Dennis Race, met with claimant to discuss his concerns. Although Claimant stated that he felt he was continually harassed by fellow workers, his contentions lacked substance. When questioned for examples of sexual harassment, he conveyed such things as the following:

    --An attorney once used the word "sweet" while pouring a cup of coffee from a coffee machine;

    --While with a group of co-workers one female employee stated "I bet you have a sexy chest"; [March 1988]

    --One evening after business hours, an attorney got on the elevator with him and paced back and forth, looking at Claimant but saying nothing;

    --Co-workers in the litigation support group were "trying to make him nervous";

    --a female co-worker stood by him swinging her hips so as to provoke him; and

    --a male co-worker had his eyes fixed to Claimant's genital area. [May 1988]

    __________

    I started working as an agency-supplied temp at Akin Gump beginning in March 1988. I was hired by the firm June 13, 1988.

    I was crazy before they decided to hire me!!

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  4. At the very time I was terminated in late October 1991 I was working on a project (for the client Hoechst-Celanese) for billing partner David P. Callet, Esq.

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  5. In 1989 Sheryl Ferguson (who had been my direct supervisor at Hogan & Hartson from 1985 to 1987) interviewed David Callet in connection with an assessment she was fired to perform as a consultant for ATLIS of Akin Gump's litigation support department.

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