Scott Steinberg · Consultant, Analyst and Business Strategist
Law firms hire testimony conusltants for trial testifying and consulting on areas like product design, what a company knew, what its development process should have caught, or whether the warnings, advertising and marketing set an expectation the product could not meet. A consultant to 3000+ brands with a background in consumer and business product development, Scott Steinberg can help provide context.
Expert reports, declarations, deposition and trial testimony on product liability, testing, reviews, development practice, warnings and instructions, marketing and advertising representations, foreseeable use, post-sale conduct and recall practice, and more.
We cover many subjects from development to marketing and corporate conduct. Our work is frequently paired with that of other trial testifying experts.
Development disputes often examine what validation a competent process would have included, what testing was performed against what was planned, and how design decisions were documented and reviewed.
Testimony often looks at development practice for products of that category and price point, and identifies where stages were compressed or skipped.
Warnings work only if a user encounters and understands them, which depends on placement, prominence, wording and whether they compete with a dozen other notices.
SMEs may look at warning and instruction practice in the category and whether the communication was reasonably capable of reaching the person it was meant for.
Advertising and packaging shape what a buyer expects a product to withstand and how they expect to use it, sometimes well beyond what the manual permits.
Opinions look at areas like marketing depictions and stated limitations, and what an ordinary purchaser would have understood the product to be for.
What people actually do with a product is knowable from complaint records, support contacts, reviews, retailer feedback and social discussion long before litigation.
Testimony assembles that record and addresses whether a pattern of use was reasonably foreseeable to the manufacturer at the relevant time.
Companies receive early signals through warranty claims, support contacts, returns and reviews, and disputes examine whether those signals were aggregated, escalated or left in separate systems.
Testimony addresses field data practice and what the record shows about when a pattern became visible internally.
Once a problem is identified, questions concern the speed and adequacy of response: whether a corrective action, service bulletin or recall followed, and how effectively customers were reached.
Testimony addresses recall and corrective action practice in the category and how the response compared to what comparable companies did.
Most consumer products are assembled from components a brand did not make, raising questions about qualification, incoming inspection and what oversight the brand maintained.
Testimony addresses supplier management practice and what a competent brand would have verified before and during production.
What the category treated as adequate development, warning and response practice has changed over time, and conduct has to be assessed against the period in question.
Testimony establishes that baseline from published guidance, category convention and comparable manufacturer conduct in the same window.
Development files, testing records and complaint data usually sit across engineering, quality and customer service systems, so scoping the document set is substantial early work. Any party may instruct.
Written opinions on topics like development process adequacy, warnings practice and post-sale corporate conduct.
Testimony on areas like how products are developed, tested and brought to market commercially.
Responsive analysis of industry practice assertions and characterizations of what a company knew and when.
Non-testifying review of development files, complaint data and recall records, plus discovery scoping.
Scott Steinberg is an analyst, consultant and business trends expert with over 25 years of experience providing management and strategic consulting services to more than 3,000 businesses and brands ranging from startups to government agencies and Fortune 500 firms.
He has testified in sample areas including intellectual property — copyrights, trademarks and patents — patent infringement, marketing, branding, video games, mobile applications, consumer product development, and the growth and monetization of online distribution platforms.
He is the author of over 30 books and has published more than five thousand articles addressing areas including but not limited to marketing, technology, leadership, innovation, advertising, digital transformation, data privacy and social networks. He appears regularly on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, and has led seminars and training programs for organizations including Wells Fargo, the PGA Tour, Century 21, Ford, Dell and Procter & Gamble.
His consulting work has been broadly recognized. He has served as a thought leader for the American Bar Association and Corporate Counsel magazine, and has received honors from the International Association for Scholastic Excellence, Fortune, and the 21st Century Icon Awards, among others.
Many things. For example, looking at the corporate conduct layer. An engineer can establish that a component failed. What that leaves open is whether the development process should have caught it, whether the warnings were reasonably capable of reaching users, whether the field data showed a pattern, and how the company responded once it knew.
Some might do so by looking at whether a user would realistically encounter and understand the warning in the ordinary course of using the product. Placement, prominence, wording and competition from surrounding notices all matter. A warning technically present in a manual nobody opens is a different thing from one on the product at the point of risk.
Warranty claims, support contact records, returns data, reviews, retailer feedback and internal escalation documentation, among other items. The question is usually not whether signals existed but whether they were aggregated across systems where anyone could see the pattern.
Yes. Consulting engagements cover areas like development file review, complaint and field data analysis, discovery scoping across engineering and customer service systems, and critique of an opposing expert's industry practice assertions.
Initial conversations about scope, timing and conflicts are without charge. Helpful detail includes the product and model year, the alleged defect or failure, and any expert disclosure deadline already set.
A conflicts check is run before any substantive discussion. An initial note listing the party names and a one-line description of the dispute is enough to start; please hold privileged or confidential material until the check clears.