Strategies and Tips: Securing and Preparing Your Expert Witness

Roula Allouch is a trial attorney with experience handling a range of litigation matters including in the areas of employment, civil rights, personal injury, and workers’ compensation appeals.

Ms. Allouch earned her undergraduate degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Kentucky in 2003 and her juris doctor from the University of Kentucky College of Law in 2006. She is licensed to practice in all state and federal courts in Kentucky and Ohio and before the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ms. Allouch is an active member of the legal community and the community at large. She currently serves as Chair of the National Board of Directors of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest civil rights and advocacy group for the American Muslim community. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Bar Association’s Rule of Law Initiative and serves as a Kentucky delegate to the Association’s House of Delegates.

Ms. Allouch was recently recognized as a Daughter of Greatness by the Muhammad Ali Center and serves on the Center’s Board of Directors. Ms. Allouch is also a faculty member with the Islamic Seminary of America. She has an interest in the arts and recently joined the Leadership Committee for the Over-The-Rhine International Film Festival.

Jay’s practice is concentrated in complex litigation and counseling and he is co-chair of the firm’s Antitrust and Consumer Protection Practice Group.

He has extensive litigation experience in a variety of industries, particularly agriculture, health care, pharmaceuticals and consumer products.

Jay represents numerous clients in high-stakes litigation, many of them class actions where the plaintiffs seek billions of dollars in damages. He is currently defending the nation’s second largest egg producer against claims of conspiring to raise the price of eggs. He also represents several Japanese auto parts manufacturers accused of price-fixing.

Jay understands the health care industry and is well-versed in what makes it unique among industries. He has represented hospital systems, as well as medical device and pharmaceutical companies, in antitrust and competition-related actions, many of which involved issues not previously litigated.

A significant portion of Jay’s practice focuses on counseling clients engaged in mergers and acquisitions. He regularly counsels such clients before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, and before states’ antitrust authorities. Over the past few years, he has successfully obtained clearance from the antitrust authorities in a number of competitively sensitive transactions. These transactions occurred in a variety of industries, including high-tech, food and beverage distribution, logistics, consumer products, fashion and health care. Jay has successfully defended transactions in administrative and federal court against the FTC and the Department of Justice, respectively. Jay also regularly advises private equity funds concerning their strategic initiatives.

In addition to antitrust, Jay advises clients on consumer protection issues, including matters relating to false advertising, marketing, promotion and privacy/data security matters. He represents clients before the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection and state consumer protection authorities. Jay has handled data breach notifications for clients and helped them devise privacy protocols, as well as a crisis management response, in the event of a data breach. Jay also defends clients in the subsequent class action that inevitably follows data breaches.

Over the past 43 years, Dr. Gerald M. Goldhaber has emerged as the nation's leading safety warnings and communication expert. He is the publisher of the Goldhaber Warnings Report. His clients have included over 100 of the top 500 corporations in the U.S. Fifty of the top 100 law firms and government agencies, including the FDA (for whom he consulted on a new nutritional label). Goldhaber’s clients have also included the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to establish guidelines for products ranging from All Terrain Vehicles (ATV's) to soda bottles to in-line skates, the USDA for whom he has consulted about potential warnings for sugary products. His expertise has also been sought by the Department of Defense (DOD) about warnings needed for military aircraft, bombs and other weapon systems, etc.

He is the author of 11 books (including two of the all-time best sellers in the field of communication (Organizational Communication, the first and leading college textbook in the field of Organizational Communication, now in its 8th edition and translated into Spanish, Finnish and Chinese and Communication Probes, which sold over 1/4 million books), several hundred scientific papers and consumer/industry speeches as well as the subject of dozens of interviews by leading television networks and newspapers/magazines (Fortune, Forbes, Time, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, etc.) on safety communications and warnings. He is also the publisher of the monthly Goldhaber Warnings Report, now in its 11th year reaching over 10,000 lawyers nationally, the instructor of the official digital course on warnings and safety communications for the National Association of Continuing Legal Education (NACLE), the nation's leading provider of continuing education for the legal profession as well as the official provider of webinar and Blab lectures on warnings and safety communications for Experts.Com, the nation's leading provider of expert witnesses.

Dr. Goldhaber has testified and/or consulted for lawyers representing corporations or injured parties in over 1000 lawsuits since 1978 and is currently CNN's and CNN.Com’s chief commentator/analyst for issues dealing with warnings and/or safety communications.