This column provides some observations on civil lawsuits, attorneys and expert witnesses and it may be of interest if you have occasion to be involved in this area. My perspective comes from more than 25 years of providing expert witness and consulting services for legal disputes (civil suits) involving a panorama of printing, publishing and digital media issues.

Litigation, whether suing or being sued, takes time and tends to be expensive. Quick results are the exception, not the rule even if the case seems ironclad. This is a hard lesson for clients to learn.

What is the level of civil legal activity in our industry? At a printing industry seminar some years ago, one of the presenters on a technical panel, discussing customer issues, made a casual comment that at any given time approximately 10 percent of the companies in our industry are engaged in a legal dispute of some kind. The speaker did not clarify his comments because time ran out before questions, but ever since then I’ve wondered whether “approximately 10 percent” is accurate.