Fred Smith on Expert Witness Work, Engineering, and Product Liability (Ep. 7)

In this episode of The Expert Witness Podcast, host David Smith sits down with Fred Smith, a senior advisor and former president of Alpine Engineering & Design.

Fred is a mechanical engineer, licensed Professional Engineer (PE), Certified Safety Professional (CSP), inventor on more than 80 patents, and an expert witness retained on more than 500 cases. He shares how he entered expert witness work, what attorneys look for in an expert, and why experience, testing, communication, and consistency matter in litigation.

The conversation covers product liability cases, patent litigation, deposition and trial testimony, visual demonstrations, courtroom strategy, and the relationship between Alpine’s design engineering work and expert witness services.

Watch the full interview below, or listen on Spotify if you prefer audio.

• 00:03 — Introduction to Fred Smith
• 01:24 — How Fred entered expert witness work
• 03:47 — Barriers for new expert witnesses
• 05:35 — Fred’s first expert witness case involving a garbage truck
• 07:08 — Using models and visual aids in trial
• 09:45 — Common case types: product liability and patent litigation
• 12:32 — Local vs. nationwide expert witness work
• 13:20 — What Fred enjoys about expert witness work
• 16:59 — What happens when the facts do not support the client’s case
• 21:40 — Honesty and consistency in expert opinions
• 23:23 — Challenges of expert witness work
• 29:12 — Trial surprises, objections, and courtroom stories
• 37:51 — Advice for newly retained expert witnesses
• 40:07 — What makes an expert persuasive
• 43:20 — How expert witnesses get more cases
• 45:58 — How expert witness work shaped Alpine Engineering
• 49:18 — How attorneys can contact Alpine Engineering

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• The Three Barriers to Entry: Understanding why attorneys prioritize experts with experience in retention, depositions, and trial testimony.
• Visual Evidence Simplifies Complexity: Fred explains how models, demonstrations, and testing can help judges and juries understand engineering issues.
• Product Liability vs. Intellectual Property: How an inventor’s experience with 80+ patents informs patent litigation and prior art analysis.
• Honesty and Consistency Matter: Experts should communicate strengths and weaknesses early, even when unfavorable.
• Engineering Design + Forensics Synergy: Active product design work strengthens expert witness insights and safety evaluations.
• Clear Communication is Critical: Strong experts both understand the engineering and explain it effectively to attorneys, judges, and juries.

David: Welcome back to the Expert Witness podcast. I’m your host, David Smith, and one of the things that I have always enjoyed is sitting down and talking with other experts about their work and hearing their stories. I’m excited today to be able to sit down with Fred Smith, who is the president of Alpine Engineering and Design. Now, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Fred over the last 15 years, and he has been a mentor to me as I’ve gotten started in this business. So, I’m excited to have him share some of his wisdom with all of us as we talk today.

Fred: I’m not sure about wisdom, but we’ll see.

David: All right. So, Fred is a mechanical engineer with a bachelor’s degree from Cal State Long Beach. He’s a licensed professional engineer and a certified safety professional. He’s been working as a consulting engineer, helping companies solve their most difficult problems through his design and analysis work. Over his 40-year career, his design work has led him to being listed as an inventor on over 80 patents and he’s been retained as an expert witness on over 500 cases. More than a hundred of which are patent cases. He’s testified in deposition over 100 times and has testified in trial over 40 times. So Fred, welcome and thank you for joining us today.

Fred: Good to be here.

David: All right. So expert expert witness work seems to be a little known career choice. You don’t usually hear kids talking about how they want to be an expert witness when they grow up. So, I’m always curious, how were you introduced to this field of work?

Fred: Yeah, it’s not something that they even talk about in engineering school that’s even a choice that you might have. So, how did I get involved in it? I started working with my father who had a design consulting business. And previous to his consulting business, he had been a vice president of engineering at several large corporations. And one of them was involved specifically with the design of garbage trucks. And because he had done so much in that field, he was asked on a number of occasions to testify when someone got caught in a garbage truck or whatever. And so I became familiar with that as a result of working with him. Now he didn’t like doing expert witness work at all. And he did some but just that was not his cup of tea. And so as time went on I took over more of the operation of the business. And I actually made the decision that that was something that I’d like to add to our company. Our company at the time primarily did design work for other people and I just thought that that would be a good thing to add to our business.

David: All right. Yeah, it’s interesting that expert witness work takes a specific kind of personality, if you will. It’s definitely not for everyone.

Fred: That’s for sure. You got to have pretty tough skin.

David: Absolutely. So when you were getting into the business, were there any barriers or obstacles that you had to overcome? Did the cases come slowly or have you been in high demand from day one?

Fred: Yeah, I wish that were the case. No. It’s interesting because the first thing that you have to have obviously is you have to have the right knowledge and experience in order to get into that expert witness work. And then I found that there are some other barriers because no attorney wants to be the first one to use an expert that hasn’t been battle tested. So, one of those barriers is have you ever actually been retained on a case before? That first case is kind of a tough one to get sometimes. And then kind of the next barrier is they don’t really want to use someone who has never been deposed. That’s always a question that seems to come up for new experts. And then, kind of the third barrier would be, have you ever testified in court? All of those are the kind of things that a new expert might get asked.

David: Absolutely. So, how did that work for you? Was that, over the course of a couple months, over the course of a couple years? How quickly did you start getting cases?

Fred: So, as I think back on it, we actually did a lot of work for other other companies. And I actually had worked for the vice president of engineering for a company who ended up going out on his own and doing expert witness work. And I got a call one day, from a plaintiff’s attorney about doing a case. And I’d never done a case before. It ended up that this former vice president ended up being the expert on the other side. And so it was a case on a garbage truck where they were lifting a rear loader container up into the garbage truck and it had got knocked loose by the packer panel and it swung around and crushed the guy that was operating it. And it was one of those cases. It was actually kind of an interesting case because it was actually the first bench trial that I ever did. In fact, I’ve probably only done two or three since then. But the judge actually his undergraduate degree was mechanical engineering and something that I actually did on that first case that I found has treated me very well is to use a lot of models and visual aids and things like that in trying to present a case.

So in this case I actually had a model of a rear loader garbage truck truck with a winch that I could actually operate on the top of the truck so that I could actually raise the… because one of the problems with this case is people couldn’t figure out how the container could be up in the air and swing around 180 degrees and smash the guy on the side of the truck. And so I’d actually made a model of the truck and the rear loader container and was able to raise it up with the winch. And then I practice being able to kick one side off and show how the container would actually swing around. So, we’re in trial. I had actually done the experiment showing that the packer panels could actually raise that container up out of the out of the latches and had a video of that. And then actually, the judge asked, the question everybody had, well, how does this swing 180 degrees? And I said, let me show you, judge. So, I wound it up and I kicked it out and it swung around 180 degrees. And the judge goes, can you do that again? And so anyhow, I did it again. He actually asked me to do it like three or four times. And he says, “And would you mind if I take that back into chambers with me?” And I said, “No, judge. It’s all yours. Have at it!”. To make a long story short,it ended up being a good verdict for the plaintiff and so if you can think of it as winning your first case the plaintiff did actually end up getting a good outcome on that case. So after that, I’d get a case here and there but it took a long time before word of mouth eventually got it so that I was getting more and more cases all the time. That’s primarily how that part of the business grew.

David: Okay. Yeah. Very neat. So you told us about a garbage truck case. Are there any other types of cases that you commonly work on?

Fred: Yeah, so because our experience is pretty broad and because I have over 80 patents. We’ve kind of got two different areas that we work in. The first obviously is product liability like the case I just told you about. The other case is intellectual property patent cases if you will. On the product liability side because we’ve designed so many different pieces of equipment. We have a wide range of things that we get called on. I mean we’ve designed refuge trucks, cranes, aerial lifts, lift gates, exercise equipment, high thrill rides, agricultural equipment. And because we have all of that experience we make good experts in that area both for product liability but also for intellectual property. The advantage in the intellectual property side is not only do you have to be an expert in the mechanical engineering side of things, but it’s also extremely helpful if you really understand the laws and things that go into the intellectual property side of things. And that’s really what makes our engineers good intellectual property experts.

David: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ve found that oftentimes it’s more about your understanding of the patent law than understanding of the actual technology that creates good arguments in a case.

Fred: Yeah. I mean sometimes the technology is pretty easy but it’s knowing what has been out there before and being able to find the proper prior art, if you’re looking to try and invalidate a patent or, why something wasn’t obvious when someone came up with a design. Those are all arguments that, if you’ve actually been in the inventing world, it’s a lot easier to understand that.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Very good. So with the type of work that you do, are most of your cases local or do you work nationwide?

Fred: Well, so I think there are some things that would probably… We have some engineers at our company that do like premises liability. Most of that is local. Most of what I’ve done in my career because it’s more design for certain types of equipment that we have expertise on. We do stuff nationwide. I’ve done stuff nationwide. Actually, I’ve gone all around the world to testify, most of it here in the United States, though.

David: All right. So, what is it that you enjoy about expert work? Why do you do this type of work?

Fred: I guess the biggest thing that I enjoy, well, there’s a number of things. Probably the first thing is you really get to help people. Whether that be, either side of a product liability case. Sometimes, someone has got hurt and they shouldn’t have got hurt. Sometimes, a piece of equipment really is a safe piece of equipment and someone just really did something really, really, really stupid, to get hurt. So, probably the biggest thing is really getting to help people. Another thing would be, working with really bright people. You get to rub shoulders with some really good attorneys. Hopefully the good ones are good to work with, the bad ones are really not good to work with. But most of the attorneys that I’ve worked with are actually really good attorneys. But it’s not just the attorneys. It’s actually, other experts either on the side you’re on or even on the other side. A lot of times I learn some really really neat things from rubbing shoulders with really bright experts on the other side of the case. So those are some of the things I like. Most mechanical engineers anyhow they love doing things like breaking things and testing things and running things over big bumps and what’ll happen to the guy in the bucket and we get to do all of that sort of thing because that’s that’s one of the things that I think sets our expert engineering company apart from most others is we do a lot of testing and and support of our opinions both on the product liability side and on the on the IP side. On the IP side, you get to help people protect their competitive advantage. either by showing that a patent’s valid and infringed or conversely that a patent’s invalid. And, I also enjoy the strategizing with the attorney on how to get my opinions across in either a report or a deposition or, particularly a trial. All of that to me is a lot of fun.

David: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of good things there. When people end up getting hurt, it’s always sad and unfortunate that they got hurt. But, finding the right person to blame is important and the first person they point the finger at isn’t always the responsible party. It’s what I’ve found.

Fred: Yeah, that’s true.

David: Yeah. All right. So, have you ever been reviewing information for a case that you’ve been retained on and found out that you are definitely on the wrong side and if you have what did you do?

Fred: You know what we try and do in those, when we first get contacted I usually like to get enough information about the case so that you have some idea of what the factors are that you’re going to be considering. And I mean, frankly, sometimes, even with a lot of lawsuits, there’s a black area and a white area and a big gray area in the middle. But sometimes the black area is a lot bigger and sometimes the white area is a lot bigger. And, there have been a number of instances where after the attorney explained to me what he thought his case was, it was so one-sided that I just told him that I wasn’t interested in taking the case and that I and and frankly that I didn’t think he had a case. Sometimes, you have to dig into it a little bit. And even at that point, after you have dug into it a little bit, you may find out that you really don’t have much of a case. And in those cases, you want to tell a good attorney is going to want to know where his case stands. because they don’t want to spend a whole bunch of money pursuing a case that isn’t a good case either. So there’s lots of times where we get contacted just to evaluate the case. I just did a case a couple of days ago where we went and inspected a piece of equipment and there was a problem with the equipment but the problem was caused by the owner of the equipment making changes to it and he was protected by the workman’s comp bar. So, there wasn’t really anything to do on that case, but we were hired to make that evaluation. It’s better the sooner in a case that you can do that. I recall another case that I did that. We got into the case and the manufacturer swore up one side and down the other that this particular piece of equipment that had an issue that the part that had an issue wasn’t manufactured by them. And if that’s the case, then you’ve got some place to go with that. Well, I wanted to make sure that that was the case. And so we actually went out and looked at some other pieces of their equipment and oh lo and behold we found out that it had the same exact piece on it. And so, I essentially told the attorney, I’m really sorry but I don’t think your client is being forthright with you and I think you really ought to resolve the case. And to their credit they did.

David: Yeah, that’s interesting. So, sometimes you don’t have enough information before you’re retained to make that determination. It’s not until you really dig in that you figure out that you’re really not on the right side of things. So,

Fred: Yeah. Yeah.

David: But, most attorneys that I’ve worked with are the same way. They want to know the strengths and weaknesses of their case so that they can make the best decisions for their clients. So, they don’t want to be strung along thinking they’ve got a great case and then have the expert hem and haw flip and flop during their deposition or at trial.

Fred: Yeah. That’s the worst.

David: Yeah.

Fred: Well, and the reality is, a good expert is going to want to give that information. because there needs to be a trust level between the expert and the attorney. so that the attorney knows that the expert isn’t going to get into a deposition and he’ll roll over 180 degrees from what he was told before his deposition. There’s nothing worse. The other thing is as an expert, and we may get into this a little bit more later, but you want to make sure in your opinions and things that you are honest and that you’re consistent. I look at whether we do all defense or all plaintiffs. We do about 5050. and we’ve done both sides of cases and I don’t find any difficulty doing that generally. because I’ve always tried to be honest in my opinions and consistent in how I apply engineering to those opinions and the law to those opinions.

David: Absolutely. All right. So, we’ve talked a little bit about the things that you like about expert work, but we know that no job is perfect. Is there anything about the expert witness industry or the work itself that bothers you or rubs you the wrong way?

Fred: Oh yeah. So you are many times at the beck and call of the attorney. And so, sometimes through no fault of their own you may get a timeline that is short and you now have to finish a report in a few days that should have taken you a couple of weeks. Sometimes an attorney may try and limit the amount of time that you spend on a case and sometimes it’s not enough time to do a good job and that is a big issue to me. because like I said earlier most of my work has come from word of mouth and what if you don’t do a good job on a case? I mean there’s a number of issues. I mean you may get excluded, your opinions may get excluded and you lose that word of mouth because now this attorney thinks you’re a jerk because he told you not to spend any time on the case and so you couldn’t do the job that you really needed to do. So those would be two of the things that are kind of involved with the day-to-day stuff. And, I mean, frankly, like with most jobs, some attorneys are jerks to work with, or at least they act like jerks. especially like in a deposition where no one’s going, no judge is ever going to see it. Well, they may, but no jury’s going to see it. So, a lot of times depositions can be kind of the toughest part, especially when you’re first starting out. because you’ve never experienced that before and the attorney is trying to make you look inexperienced. You don’t know what you’re talking about, that there’s inconsistencies in your testimony, that you’re not really the expert that you said you were. And here’s where having that tough skin, you just got to have it. You got to know your stuff and you got to have everything on your CV, your curriculum vitae needs to be exactly what you say it is. because like I said before one of the advantages of this business is working with really bright people. Well let me tell you if you make a mistake they’re going to find it and they’re going to bring it out and so, you just got to make sure that your opinions are based on solid engineering and that you haven’t made mistakes and that you’ve that you’ve got good basis for all of your opinions and that you’ve you’ve you’ve expressed what that basis is. And if you miss any of those, you’re going to get skewered in a deposition or worse at trial. So, those are some of the things. A lot of those things you have control over and can make sure that they’re not issues, but there are some of those things that you just don’t have control over. Timelines, some attorneys are better at keeping track of those than others. We’ve found that it’s helpful if we know what those timelines are ahead of time, like when they first call you on the phone, man, when do you need this report? Oh, you need it tomorrow? Well, I’m sorry, I can’t help you. We’ve actually had that happen on a number of occasions. I will tell you though that, if you’re looking to break into expert witness work, sometimes that’s when they’re out on a limb, so to speak. Timewise, they just need anybody to do anything for them. So, sometimes it’s a little easier to break in, on some of those cases. But does that mean you may have to put in an all-nighter or two? Sometimes. I’ve done lots of all-nighters as an expert. so, those are some of the some of the minuses of being an expert and they’re kind of also tied to some of the pluses.

David: Absolutely. All right. So, this is always an interesting discussion topic for me. Depositions and trials are usually thought of as serious and well planned out events, but if you’ve been to a few of those, that’s not always the case. So, have you had any particularly light-hearted or funny interactions during a deposition or trial you can share with us?

Fred: So actually I would say that I think that is actually incorrect. I think for trials they try and plan them out but they are probably one of the most fluid things that you will ever experience because you don’t know what the other side’s going to do or what they’re going to say. And so, I mean, I’ll give you I’ll give you for instance of one of those and then I’ll tell you a kind of a funny experience. One time I was testifying in a case on a rear loader garbage truck and I wanted to explain to the jury how a rear loader garbage truck worked. And I had these I had these nice PowerPoint presentations and I’ve got this all all so that I could click on it and show how how all of the packer panels worked and and everything and and I’m sitting on the stand about ready to do that and the other side objected and got them thrown out so I couldn’t use them. Well, so what I did instead is, I got the big pad out and actually drew everything on the pad and explained it that way, which frankly ended up being just as effective. But boy, it certainly wasn’t planned that way. I had another time where I was actually on the stand and I actually had taken some photographs at an inspection of a forklift that was lifting up a big piece of granite. And at my inspection I’d shown how this works, how this how they actually could lift it up and stuff and used a big piece of plywood and I wanted to show that to the jury and and the other side objected and it actually got thrown. I wasn’t able to show it but the jury wanted to see that and so it actually worked against them because the, I got out that we had all these great stuff that we wanted to show the jury. I also had a model that I had that I was going to use to explain some stuff and he objected over my model. Well, the jury wanted to see my model, too. Anyhow, we got a 100% defense verdict on that one. And I think a lot of it was because he made bad objections, to stuff that I wanted to to bring in. So, that’s another thing about experience. The more experience you have, the more you can actually help and assist the attorneys in making sure that you can get in the stuff that you want to get in. I had another I thought it was a funny experience. I’m not sure that the attorney thought it was that funny. But my parents’ roots are in Wyoming. used to travel out there every summer. That’s where all my cousins lived and the like and where my grandmas and grandpas lived and so I knew Wyoming extremely well and I had a case up there and when I went to court rather than being dressed in my best suit and and everything I actually was wearing a sports jacket a corduroy sports jacket and and pants and kind of dressed down just a little bit. Most people in Wyoming are ranchers. They’re down to earth. They’re they’re not flashy. And so I dressed like I knew they would appreciate. This was a case on a material handler that had run down a hill and the guy didn’t stop and it tipped over. The particular company, they have had an attorney that they worked with and he did cases all over a particular region. but they usually get a local attorney so that they know the laws, they know the judges, the paralegals, all that kind of stuff. And so I’m on the stand testifying and the attorney who’s doing my cross is standing at the lectern there and he is from Beverly Hills, California and he is dressed like it. I mean, he is dressed to the nines. He’s got diamond cuff links and all of his everything’s monogrammed on him and and he’s asking me questions and I’m answering them and another thing that you learn as an expert is to not let them get under your skin. So I’m on the stand, he’s asking questions, I’m answering them, and I mean, they weren’t difficult questions because I knew my stuff and I knew where we were going with things. And but he’s getting madder and madder and madder and pretty soon he starts pounding on the lectern “Mr. Smith!” And the local attorney leans over to the one that I worked with a lot. He says, “Should I say anything?” And he says, “Oh no, let this one go.”. And pretty soon, after about three more pounds on the pulpit, the judge says, “Mr. So and so, we don’t treat our experts like that here in Wyoming.”. Well, needless to say, that was another 100% defense verdict. The Wyomingites didn’t appreciate how he was actually treating the expert. And the thing is I think most experts will find that, in court it’s actually a lot easier because usually the attorneys don’t want to come off looking like a jerk to the jury.

David: Yeah, absolutely. Very good. He probably didn’t have a very good day after that, I’d imagine.

Fred: Well, the jury wasn’t out very long. He pretty well lost it just as a result of how he acted. And I mean we had a good case obviously, but he totally lost the jurors in that instant.

David: Yeah, it’s interesting. I found that sometimes it’s really how the attorneys are, but more often than not when they’re, getting mad or frothing at the mouth and just charging after something that it’s more of an act than how they actually are. I remember one deposition I was in, the two attorneys were just going at it after each other. They had asked me a question and they objected and they went back and forth for 10 minutes, just yelling at each other. And then at the end of the deposition, when we were off the record, they said, hey, you want to go get lunch after this? And I was like, “What on earth is happening?”. So, it turns out they had been good friends. They’ve done a ton of cases against each other. And, it’s just part of the act, part of, trying to get the best results for their clients. So,

Fred: Yep.

David: Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t, I guess.

David: All right. So, a few more questions for you, if you will. If you were going to give someone who had just been retained on their first case, one piece of advice. What would it be?

Fred: Oh, that’s easy. Be honest and consistent in your opinions. If you want to do this as a long-term situation, you can’t afford to not be honest and consistent. If you start flip-flopping around. You’ll get skewered, you’ll get Dauberted, you’ll get excluded. It can ruin your career. And not only that, but attorneys want to work with someone who is honest and consistent and will let them know where they really are in their case. Sometimes the juries make interesting decisions regardless of how the case is presented on each side. But, the attorneys really, good attorneys particularly really do want to have the straight scoop and want to be involved. And there are sometimes where you’ve got warts in your case and you just frankly have to own up to the warts and the attorneys need to know what those warts are ahead of time and how you’re planning on handling those and that’s just part of it. I mean generally you don’t have a lawsuit unless there’s that big gray area in the middle. If it’s totally one side of One way or the other, it usually gets settled pretty quickly.

David: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, what do you find makes a good expert or helps the expert be persuasive in a deposition or trial?

Fred: So, again, it’s well, that’s a loaded question actually. David. So, it’s interesting because engineers have a tendency to be right-brained. Those are the ones that will sit in the corner and do calculations all day and never speak to anyone and be tickled pink that that was their day. Maybe that’s left-brain. I don’t remember. I think that’s left-rain. Anyhow, whatever. And the reality is for someone to be a good expert, they really have to have both left brain and right brain. you you have to know the you have to know your stuff and you have to have that all put together so you know what your opinions are, you know what the basis for your opinions are, but then you have to be able to open your mouth and be able to express the those opinions in a way that someone on a jury or your attorney or the opposing attorney is going to understand your opinions and and and sometimes that’s that’s difficult to do especially for people who don’t have experience being in front of a an audience so to speak. So I think that answers your question.

David: Yeah, absolutely. You have to be good at more than one thing to be a good expert.

Fred: Yeah. And you have to have the technical expertise, but then you have to be able to express that and know what the basis for your opinions are. Know where to stand your ground and know where to give up ground. I once had an attorney, tell me, are you the son of Hitler? And you are, you just say yes. And the reality is for those difficult questions, the more you make of them, the more they get implanted in the head of the jury that oh wow, this is something super important even though it may not be.

David: Right. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So, most experts I’ve found would like to be involved in more cases. You’ve done quite a few of these. What have you found to be the most effective marketing techniques or the best way to get new cases?

Fred: Well, I think we’ve kind of discussed that already, but the biggest thing is to do a good job. If you do a good job as an expert, you’ll get repeat business. You’ll get additional business from word of mouth. One of the things that I didn’t realize as an expert is how closely attorneys work with other attorneys even in other firms. There’s a lot of like product liability groups that a lot of them will all be a member of and it’s not uncommon for them to say hey I got a case regarding blah blah blah. anybody who’s a good expert that can handle blah blah blah and that happens all the time. And so, the vast majority of work that you’re going to get as an expert is is going to be repeat work if you’ve done a good job for them and that they like working with you. And work that you get from from word of mouth. I did a case down in Texas many many many years ago, 30 30 plus years ago and I apparently did a really good job. In fact, that’s actually a funny case, but we don’t have time for it here. As a result of that single case, I’ve done many many many many cases down in Texas. And I can actually tell you, this attorney got my name from that attorney who then this one got his my name from that attorney. We haven’t sent mailers out or anything like that. All of that work down there has come from that single case, that I did down there.

David: Yeah, that’s great. All right. So, what has adding expert witness work to your business’s offerings done for your life and your business?

Fred: Oh like I said earlier, this was a decision that I made. Like I said, my dad hated expert witness work. And frankly, there’s sometimes where I hate expert witness work, but most of the time I actually really enjoy it. There’s a there’s a part to expert witness work, if you’re good at it, that’s a lot like invention. It has a lot of the same things that invention has that make it that make it fun. There’s a few like we talked about that make it so it’s not so fun. But, you have that in invention too when things don’t go right and you think things are going to work this way and it doesn’t and you have to scratch your head and find out why it’s not doing what it’s supposed to do and etc. So, adding expert witness work has made us better engineers on the side of stuff for design. because we look at things differently now. We’re way more cognizant of safety in design than I was when I got out of college because they don’t teach an awful lot of that. You may have a class or two or maybe a section in a class or two about safety and design, but you don’t get an awful lot of that. So, it’s actually improved our business an awfully lot. If you’re good at it, you’ll make extremely good money. It pays well. It’s in a lot of respects provided some financial stability for the business that’s allowed us to continue doing design of new products. and to feed other areas of our business and it goes both ways in our business because we still do engineering work. That makes it so that we’re able to do more work in the product liability side and and and frankly I think most attorneys like the fact that we’re still actively doing design work. and so I think the two sides of our business have been very synergistic. One feeding the other. and I think from that perspective, it’s it’s it’s been good for both sides of our both sides of our business.

David: Yeah, that’s great. Thank you. So, how can attorneys find you should they want to work with you? What’s the best way? Give yourself a chance to pitch your business.

Fred: Well. The easiest way is to go to www.alpineg.com. That’s our website. You can see all of our experts. And you can download their CVs. You can call us. We’re always open to a telephone call and that first telephone call, we’ll give you what our thoughts are off the cuff. If you’ve got a case. You can call us at 801-763-8484. if you actually retain us, we’ll actually give you our cell phone too, so you can get a hold of us anytime. But anyhow, those are the primary ways to get a hold of us.

David: All right. Well, thank you, Fred. It’s been a pleasure.

Fred: Yeah, it’s been fun.

David: Yeah, you’ve clearly got a wealth of knowledge and a lot of good stories. So, I appreciate you sharing some of that with us today.

Fred: I only shared a few of them. There’s tons of every case usually has a story. So, there’s lots of those. We’ve been very very successful in the cases that we’ve done. And I think a lot of that is because we’re a little bit choosy in the cases that we take. So, that we really do feel that we’re on the right side of a case. It makes it a lot easier to testify in good faith if you will.

David: Absolutely. All right. Well, thanks Fred. Take care and have a good day.

Fred: Thank you very much.

Fred Smith is a mechanical engineer and advisor at Alpine Engineering and Design. A graduate of Cal State Long Beach, he is a licensed Professional Engineer and a Certified Safety Professional. Over his 40-year career, he has been listed as an inventor on more than 80 patents and has been retained as an expert witness on over 500 cases. He has testified in deposition over 100 times and in trial over 40 times. Fred is dedicated to solving complex technical problems through design, testing, and forensic analysis, ensuring that engineering contributes to a safer and more just world.

Learn more about Fred Smith on Alpine Engineering’s Our Experts page.

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