What Do Human Factors/Ergonomics Experts Have to Tell Juries That They Don’t Know – But May Think They Know?

摘要

Product liability and personal injury litigation frequently involves circumstances where an injury orproperty damage occurred as humans were interacting with products and/or environments whileperforming some task. Human Factors/Ergonomics (HFE) professionals are often involved as expertsin these cases. The question addressed here is what benefits do juries derive from HFE experttestimony. In this session five panelists with experience as expert witnesses each describe a case thatillustrates HFE testimony. Examples of issues addressed are sensory/perceptual limitations, attentioncapture and capacity, and induced errors. The presentations focus on issues where expert testimonywould likely benefit jury understanding technical topics about which jurors may know little about orhave misconceptions.