Representative Expert Witness Engagements

2026 Matter type · Premises safety Setting · Commercial office property Role · Retained expert

Common-area condition management at a commercial office property

Retained by counsel to evaluate whether the property-management organization maintained a reliable system for identifying, documenting, referring, escalating, and closing out common-area conditions, measured against accepted commercial property-management practice.

Property management agreement reviewed against the management functions actually performed on site
Inspection, documentation, referral, supervision, and follow-through practices evaluated as a connected system
Written expert report prepared for counsel

2026 Matter type · Heating-equipment maintenance & carbon-monoxide detection Setting · Multifamily apartment community Role · Retained expert

In-unit heating equipment and carbon-monoxide detection at a multifamily community

Retained by counsel to evaluate how property management assigned and carried out responsibility for in-unit gas-fired heating equipment and carbon-monoxide detection: preventive maintenance, equipment and service records, inspections, qualified-contractor follow-through, resident-complaint handling, staff training, emergency escalation, and documented corrective work, measured against accepted multifamily operating practice.

Heating maintenance and carbon-monoxide detection analyzed as separate parts of the hazard pathway
Management records and sworn discovery responses reviewed against engineering findings supplied by others
Technical heater-failure diagnosis and medical causation expressly reserved to other specialists

Opinions in summary

There was no scheduled maintenance or inspection program for the gas-fired heaters. Answering heat complaints as they came in is repair dispatch rather than a maintenance program, and it is not built to catch a failing unit that is still putting out heat.
Management lacked a working picture of the heating equipment in service. With no install dates, equipment list or service history, it could not schedule inspections, plan for replacement or spot units that had outlived their expected life.
Every apartment turnover passed up a chance to inspect, since the routine move-in walk-through and maintenance steps left out the heating equipment.
Management had no trained on-site staff and no standing arrangement with a qualified gas-appliance contractor, and it gave the resident no guidance or warning about the heater or carbon monoxide.
The record shows no management program for carbon-monoxide alarms in apartments heated by gas. Alarm coverage was treated as its own safety layer, apart from maintenance.
Management already had the means, including a work-order system, a reporting chain and contractor relationships, to run a heating-maintenance program and did not put them to use.

These opinions draw on sworn discovery answers and on engineering conclusions reached by others. I offer no view on how the equipment failed, where the release originated, medical causation or legal duty.

2026 Matter type · Loading-dock operations & equipment repair escalation Setting · High-volume institutional loading dock, commercial management Role · Retained expert

Out-of-service dock leveler at a high-volume institutional loading dock

Retained by counsel to evaluate whether management had reliable systems for notice, inspection, repair escalation, qualified-vendor follow-through, control of a disabled bay, and authorization of temporary dockboard arrangements, measured against accepted commercial property-management practice.

Management-agreement authority, repair chronology, and vendor records reviewed together
Equipment engineering and medical causation expressly reserved to other specialists
Written expert report prepared for counsel

How the field defines real estate and its management

The review started from how the profession defines its own field rather than from a reading of the contract. In everyday industry usage, real estate means land together with the improvements fixed to it. The Institute of Real Estate Management describes the discipline as running and caring for properties to serve the objectives of owners and investors, and names care of the physical site as the manager’s leading responsibility. The National Association of REALTORS^® counts management as one branch of the real estate business. Licensing coursework teaches how fixed items become part of the real property: by the way they are affixed, whether they were fitted to the building, and what was intended when they were put in. Under that framework, dock equipment built into the structure and running on building power belongs to the managed property. I present this as a description of industry practice, not a legal classification.

Opinions in summary

The management firm’s own staff described the dock equipment as theirs to maintain, and nothing in the management paperwork, decisions or owner directions carved it out.
Under normal practice, a full-service property manager lists permanently installed dock equipment in its asset register, preventive-maintenance calendar and capital plan. Leaving a whole class of equipment out is a management choice in its own right and should be intentional, approved and written down.
The management firm in fact carried out the maintenance function: troubleshooting faults, making repairs, choosing and directing the outside contractor, and ordering parts.
Fixing equipment only when someone calls is repair work, not a maintenance program, and it kept aging equipment with repeated breakdowns outside scheduled inspections, recordkeeping and replacement planning.
The people who noticed equipment outages day to day sat within the management firm’s own reporting chain.
Management had the power to close a broken bay but no routine for doing it. Normal practice is to tag the bay as closed, steer trucks elsewhere, log the outage, approve any stopgap method and reopen the bay once it is fixed.
The owner holding title to and paying for the equipment did not shift maintenance management off the manager. In a third-party setup, the owner funds the work while the manager plans, performs or hires out, records and reports it.

I offer no view on legal duty, negligence, contract meaning, equipment engineering or causation, or on whether another approach would have changed the result.

2026 Matter type · Utility billing & master-meter cost allocation Setting · Apartment community, multifamily management Role · Retained expert

Resident utility charges at a master-metered apartment community

Retained by counsel to evaluate utility-billing practices, including master-meter cost allocation, flat-fee and ratio-billing (RUBS) setup, lease addenda and resident disclosures, billing-vendor oversight, reconciliation, and resident billing disputes, measured against accepted multifamily property-management practice.

Lease forms, charge methodology, vendor records, and actual utility costs reviewed together
Statutory applicability and legal conclusions expressly reserved to counsel
Engagement beginning

2026 Matter type · Winter-maintenance program management Setting · Mixed-use commercial property, sidewalk frontage Role · Retained expert (defense)

Sidewalk snow and ice management at a mixed-use commercial property

Retained by defense counsel to evaluate how the winter-maintenance program for a commercial sidewalk frontage was organized, assigned, supervised, communicated, and documented among the owner, the manager, and the contractors, measured against general property-management practice and published industry guidance.

Depositions, work orders, pre-storm communications, and weather records reviewed together
De-icing product selection, application rates, and legal conclusions expressly reserved to other specialists and counsel
Report in preparation

2026 Matter type · Owner oversight of third-party management Setting · Multifamily community Role · Retained expert (plaintiff)

Ownership oversight of third-party management at a multifamily community

Retained by plaintiff counsel to evaluate owner-level oversight of a third-party property manager, including leasing performance, marketing, operating expenses, and reporting, measured against general property-management practice.

Management agreements, operating reports, budgets, and owner communications reviewed together
Valuation, damages, and legal conclusions expressly reserved to other specialists and counsel
Engagement beginning

2026 Matter type · Winter maintenance & premises safety Setting · Leased property, sidewalk Role · Retained expert (plaintiff)

Sidewalk snow and ice treatment at a leased property

Retained by plaintiff counsel to evaluate whether the landlord had a reasonable program for monitoring winter conditions and deciding when to treat a sidewalk, measured against general property-management practice and published industry guidance.

Lease provisions, maintenance records, and weather records reviewed together
Weather interpretation, de-icing products, and legal conclusions expressly reserved to other specialists and counsel
Engagement beginning

Fictional composite example · Not an actual engagement

Matter type · Lighting & security operations Setting · Mixed-use property with structured parking Role · Illustration only

Parking-deck lighting outage at a mixed-use property

This example is fictional. It is a composite written to show how I approach a premises-security record. It does not describe any actual matter, party, property or opinion I have given, and none of its facts come from a real case.

The scenario

A 212-unit apartment community sits above a ground-floor retail podium and a two-level structured parking deck. Over twenty-three days, eleven consecutive nightly patrol logs from the contract security vendor record “lights out – L2 east.” Two work orders are opened for the condition and closed with the status “parts ordered”; no parts invoice, no vendor dispatch and no re-inspection appear in the record. The property’s written policy library contains a detailed apartment-interior inspection procedure with an assigned supervising role and photographic retention, but no procedure addressing exterior or garage lighting on any schedule. A visitor is assaulted on the second level during the outage period.

Opinions in summary

The record supports a layered operational-control deficiency rather than a single missed repair. Detection, interim protection, referral, escalation and verified closure each depended on an individual remembering to act, and none was assigned to a role, a schedule or a system of record.
A work-order status of “parts ordered” without a purchase record, vendor dispatch or re-inspection is a disposition, not a repair. In management practice, closure of a safety-related work order is verified by the person who did not perform the work.
Eleven consecutive vendor observations of the same condition constitute notice to the management organization, because the vendor’s report line ran into the manager’s own reporting structure. The relevant question is not whether the manager knew, but what the manager’s system was designed to do with what it knew.
The absence of an exterior lighting inspection procedure is not attributable to an operator that lacked the capacity to write one; the same policy library demonstrates that capacity for interior inspections.
A prudent operator holding a known, unrepaired lighting outage in a structured deck has an identifiable and ordinary set of interim measures available — temporary fixtures, modified patrol routing, partial closure of the level, and notice to residents — and the record shows none was considered, authorized or declined.

Foreseeability of criminal conduct, photometric adequacy of the lighting that remained, and causation would be reserved to counsel, the factfinder and qualified specialists.

Fictional composite example · Not an actual engagement

Matter type · Exterior stair & guardrail maintenance Setting · Garden-style apartment community Role · Illustration only

Loose stair-landing guardrail at a garden-style apartment community

This example is fictional. The scenario, the parties, the record citations and the sample report below were written to show the structure, register and evidentiary discipline of my reports. None of it describes an actual matter, property or opinion I have given.

The scenario

A 156-unit garden-style community constructed in 1987 has exterior wood stair towers with steel guardrails. Over a five-month period, one resident submits three portal requests describing a loose guardrail at a second-floor landing. Each resulting work order is closed with the single-word disposition “tightened.” The annual exterior inspection checklist contains no line item for stairs, landings or guardrails, and stair-tower replacement has been carried as a deferred capital item across two consecutive budget cycles. A guest leans on the landing guardrail; the rail separates from its post and the guest falls to grade.

Abbreviated sample report (fictional)

Sample Plaintiff v. Example Residential Owner, LLC, and Example Management Co.
Property Management Systems Expert Report · Emily Goodman Shortall, CPM^®, ARM^®

1. Executive summary of opinions

This is a property-management systems analysis. It examines how the management organization at the Community organized the detection, documentation, repair, escalation and verified closure of exterior guardrail conditions — what it assigned, what it verified and what it wrote down. It does not address whether any individual employee behaved improperly, whether any party owed or breached a legal duty, or what caused the guest’s fall. Those questions belong to counsel and the trier of fact; questions of structural capacity and fastener failure belong to qualified engineers.

The record supports a layered operational-control deficiency rather than a single missed repair. The Community’s only scheduled inspection of exterior elements (EX000412–EX000419) omits stair towers and guardrails entirely. Three resident requests describing the same condition at the same location over 148 days (EX000071, EX000088, EX000103) were each dispositioned by the same technician with the single word “tightened,” without a parts record, a torque or fastener note, a supervisor’s verification or a return inspection. The deferral of stair-tower replacement in two consecutive capital plans (EX000230, EX000264) was not accompanied by any interim inspection frequency, temporary reinforcement or written notice to ownership of the operating consequence of waiting. Six opinions emerge from the record.

2. Qualifications

I have operated commercial and multifamily real estate for twenty-three years, hold the CPM^® and ARM^® designations of the Institute of Real Estate Management, and have held portfolio-level responsibility for more than twelve thousand apartment units, including garden-style communities of the vintage and construction type at issue. My curriculum vitae is attached as Exhibit A.

3. Materials reviewed

Property Management Agreement and the annual operating and capital budgets approved thereunder (EX000001–EX000058)
Resident portal requests, work-order histories and technician dispositions (EX000060–EX000140)
Annual exterior inspection checklists, completed forms and photographic attachments (EX000400–EX000460)
Capital-plan drafts, deferral memoranda and owner approval correspondence (EX000220–EX000290)
The management organization’s written policy library (EX000500–EX000581)
Deposition transcripts of the community manager, the maintenance supervisor and the regional manager

4. Method

I traced the reported condition through each stage of the management control cycle — detection, documentation, interim protection, referral, assignment, escalation and verified closure — and at each stage compared what the record shows against the practice a reasonably prudent operator of a comparable community would maintain. Where a document or category of document that ordinarily exists was not produced, I identify it as absent from the materials provided to me rather than as nonexistent. Property-maintenance codes and manufacturer guidance are referenced only as operating context; I offer no opinion on their legal effect.

5. Opinions

Opinion 1 — The inspection program was not designed to detect this condition. The exterior checklist in use (EX000412) enumerates roofing, gutters, siding, parking surfaces, signage and landscape irrigation. It contains no entry for stair towers, landings, treads or guardrails. In management practice, an inspection program defines what will be looked at, by whom, how often and against what criterion; a condition outside that definition is found only by accident or by complaint. Here it was found by complaint, three times.

Opinion 2 — The disposition “tightened” records a task, not a verified result. Each of the three work orders (EX000071, EX000088, EX000103) was closed by the responding technician without a parts entry, a description of the fastener condition observed, a photograph or a supervisor’s sign-off. The maintenance supervisor testified that he “would not have gone out behind” the technician on a routine ticket. In management practice, closure of a work order touching a life-safety element is verified by a person other than the one who performed the work, and that verification is recorded.

Opinion 3 — Three requests for the same condition at the same location constituted a recurrence that the system was not built to recognize. The work-order platform in use is capable of flagging repeat requests by unit and category; the community manager testified that the flag was “not something we turned on.” A prudent operator treats the second report of a previously “completed” repair as a supervisory event, not a maintenance event, because recurrence is evidence that the first correction did not hold.

Opinion 4 — The capital deferral was not managed as an operating decision with operating consequences. The deferral memoranda (EX000230, EX000264) address cost and timing. Neither identifies a compensating control — an increased inspection frequency, a load restriction, temporary reinforcement, or resident notice — and neither advises ownership that the stair towers would continue in service past their planned replacement date without one. In management practice, a decision to defer replacement of a life-safety element is paired with a decision about how that element will be managed in the interim, and both are documented.

Opinion 5 — The absence of an exterior guardrail procedure is not attributable to an operator lacking the capacity to write one. The same policy library (EX000500–EX000581) contains a seven-page make-ready inspection procedure with an assigned supervising role, business-day deadlines, a designated system of record and mandatory photographic retention. The organization knew how to construct an inspection control. It constructed one for the interior of a vacant apartment and not for the exterior elements its residents and guests used every day.

Opinion 6 — The management organization possessed the organizational means to operate an effective control and did not deploy them. A work-order system with recurrence flagging, a supervisory chain from technician to maintenance supervisor to community manager to regional manager, an annual inspection cycle and a capital-planning process were all in place. The deficiency was not one of resources; it was one of design and follow-through.

6. Matters not addressed

I offer no opinion on legal duty, breach, negligence, code compliance, the structural or metallurgical cause of the guardrail separation, medical causation or damages. I have not inspected the Community, and I do not opine on the physical condition of the guardrail at any point in time; my opinions concern the management system that surrounded it.

7. Basis and right to supplement

The opinions above are held to a reasonable degree of professional certainty within the field of property management and rest on the materials identified in Section 3. I reserve the right to supplement or revise them should additional records, testimony or physical evidence be produced.

Emily Goodman Shortall, CPM^®, ARM^®
Sample report · not signed · fictional matter · record citations are illustrative

Available on request Matter type · Various Role · Case review / consulting

Merits review and scope consulting

Pre-retention review of property-management agreements, deposition transcripts, and incident materials to identify operator-facing questions counsel should be asking before formal retention. Additional matter summaries and a fuller engagement list are available under appropriate conflict-check procedures.

Recent counsel-retained work, de-identified.

Common-area condition management at a commercial office property

In-unit heating equipment and carbon-monoxide detection at a multifamily community

Opinions in summary

Out-of-service dock leveler at a high-volume institutional loading dock

How the field defines real estate and its management

Opinions in summary

Resident utility charges at a master-metered apartment community

Sidewalk snow and ice management at a mixed-use commercial property

Ownership oversight of third-party management at a multifamily community

Sidewalk snow and ice treatment at a leased property

Parking-deck lighting outage at a mixed-use property

The scenario

Opinions in summary

Loose stair-landing guardrail at a garden-style apartment community

The scenario

Abbreviated sample report (fictional)

1. Executive summary of opinions

2. Qualifications

3. Materials reviewed

4. Method

5. Opinions

6. Matters not addressed

7. Basis and right to supplement

Merits review and scope consulting

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