From the New York Times, in connection with an article covered here the other day:
An article on Friday about Kleiner Perkins, the venture capital firm, which filed for reimbursement in a gender discrimination suit, misstated the fees paid to Paul Gompers, a professor at Harvard Business School who was a witness in the case. It was $131,400, not $92,700.
The earlier post generated some skeptical reaction in the comments about the efficacy and unintended consequences of any law attempting to rein this in, interfering with the right of contract between a litigant and a hired expert, and judging the fee as high based on time spent rather than prior expertise accumulated. All fine points. It's interesting to put them to the test with a thought experiment. How would you feel about the government paying an expert witness $131,400 to testify in a case against you? One can argue that when a private party does something that is different from when the state does it, and that is a distinction worth paying attention to, up to a point.
