Working With a Fitness Industry Expert Witness: A Litigator’s Field Guide
$49.00
You have a gym injury case in an industry you do not work in. This field guide, written by an operator with 35+ years in the fitness industry and 40+ expert retentions for plaintiff and defense counsel, covers where the health club standard of care actually comes from, the record set that decides the review (and how to run the first 30 days), equipment cases in depth, facility inspections, and how reports, depositions, and testimony flow — with retention and fees stated plainly and a document request checklist you can work from at intake.
Gym injury litigation is an operations case. The standard-of-care questions are rarely medical — they are operational: how the facility was staffed, when the equipment was last inspected and by whom, what the club's own written procedures said, and whether anybody followed them. Attorneys who understand that early build better cases, whichever side they are on.
Working With a Fitness Industry Expert Witness: A Litigator's Field Guide was written by Jim Thomas of Fitness Management & Consulting — 35+ years owning, operating, buying, selling, and consulting for health clubs, and retained as an expert witness in more than 40 fitness industry cases, for plaintiff and defense firms in roughly comparable numbers.
Inside the manual:
- The operations frame — why gym cases turn on records and routines, and the operations questions behind each common fact pattern (equipment, falls, supervision, medical events, childcare, aquatics).
- The standard of care, sourced — manufacturer guidance, industry practice, the facility's own procedures, and the legal frame — and the six operational areas that come up again and again.
- The first 30 days — the record set that decides the review (incident report, maintenance and inspection logs, staffing and training records, the signed agreement version, policies vs. practice, prior incidents), a week-by-week timeline, and a section on perishable camera and electronic records.
- Equipment cases in depth — treadmills and the rest of the floor: maintenance logs, inspection cadence, repair history, signage and placement, and the incident response.
- Facility inspections — what a site visit adds, a step-by-step inspection day, and how inspection time is billed.
- Reports, depositions, and testimony — the phases of an engagement, the anatomy of an expert report, and what to expect at deposition.
- Retention and fees, plainly — $300/hour case work against a $3,000 retainer (10 hours, in advance), testimony at $400/hour with a $1,000 nonrefundable date reserve, expense terms, an illustrative engagement budget, and an engagement worksheet.
- Tools for counsel — a vetting and working checklist, the questions attorneys ask most, a red-flags/good-signs table for reading a facility file fast, a full document request checklist, and an operations vocabulary glossary.
Who this is for: plaintiff and defense attorneys handling gym, health club, and fitness-facility injury cases — and the insurers and adjusters who evaluate them.
What this is not: This manual is industry and process information from an operator and expert witness. It is not legal advice, and it does not create an expert-client or attorney-client relationship with any reader. Every case turns on its own facts, jurisdiction, and records.
Details: 26-page PDF manual, delivered as an instant digital download after checkout.
Digital download: the PDF is delivered electronically after checkout (download link on the confirmation page and by email). No shipping applies. Questions before you buy? Call 214-629-7223.
