Nigel Jones Expert Witness

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Technology

Supreme Court Rules Against Aereo

The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision ruled that Aereo was publicly performing plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. This was a major victory for the plaintiffs in what was considered to be the biggest copyright ruling in years. If the Supreme Court had ruled in Aereo’s favor, then plaintiffs still had various causes of action against Aereo and were planning on using Nigel Jones as an expert in pursuing those causes.

Class Action Against Ford to Proceed

A West Virginia judge upheld the warranty claims part of a class action lawsuit against Ford. Mr. Jones has been retained by the plaintiffs in this matter to assist them in examining Ford’s source code.

Toyota agrees to $1.2B settlement

Following a string of well-publicized cases of unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles, the NHTSA commissioned NASA to study the Electronic Throttle Control System (ETCSi). Following the publication of a heavily redacted report, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said, “We enlisted the best and brightest engineers to study Toyota’s electronics systems, and the verdict is in. There is no electronic-based cause for unintended high-speed acceleration in Toyotas.”

However, for anyone that actually read the NASA report it was clear that Secretary LaHood was grossly mischaracterizing what NASA’s engineers had found and reported on. Subsequently a class action lawsuit was certified against Toyota, and Nigel Jones was asked by the plaintiffs’ counsel to be part of the team studying Toyota’s ETCSi source code.

As explained by the plaintiffs’ lawyers in this video, notwithstanding the stringent conditions imposed on the review of the code, the plaintiffs’ experts were indeed able to find “deficiencies in the source code that were the basis of our contentions.” The principal deficiency and a multitude of other deficiencies were discovered by Nigel Jones. Following the issuance of his and other expert reports, Toyota elected to settle the class action lawsuit for approximately $1.2B–$1.6B. A related bellwether personal injury case (Shirlene Van Alfen, et. al. v. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A.) also settled under confidential terms.

The first case to go to trial in which the jury heard about the deficiencies Mr. Jones discovered in Toyota’s ETCSi was in Oklahoma. The jury found for the plaintiff and determined that Toyota acted with “reckless disregard.” Before the jury could rule on punitive damages, Toyota settled the case and shortly thereafter announced that they would enter into intensive settlement negotiations to resolve the hundreds of other outstanding unintended acceleration cases.

DISH Network Judgement Award over $65M

Today Federal Judge the Honorable William V. Gallo for the Southern District of California granted summary judgment in a case brought by DISH Network against Sonicview USA et al. The judgment awarded DISH Network $64,980,200 against the Sonicview Defendants, and $984,800 jointly against Duane Bernard and Courtney Bernard, as well as permanently enjoining the defendants and ordering them to destroy all remaining inventory. Judge Gallo’s order made extensive reference to expert reports submitted by RMB Consulting’s president Nigel Jones.

Forensic Analysis

For an embedded systems engineer, much of the expert witness work can involve forensic analysis of high tech products. In this video, Nigel Jones explains the process and tools he uses when performing his investigation.

video transcript