Healthcare / Medical Peer Review Expert Witnesses: 7

Tanja Johnson, MSN, FNP-C, ENP-C, LNC, is a Board-Certified Nurse Practitioner with over 25 years of experience in healthcare roles from Registered Nurse to Nurse Practitioner. Ms. Johnson earned her Master of Science in Nursing, becoming a board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner, a board-certified Emergency Medicine Nurse Practitioner, and then adding a PMHNP postgraduate degree. She has also obtained a Legal Nurse Consultant certificate to further facilitate her ability to contribute to the legal community.

Qualifications: Ms. Johnson has experience working in mental health, long-term care, hospice, medical/surgical care, and emergency medicine for a 20-year span as a registered nurse. The past 8 years have been spent practicing in emergency medicine as a nurse practitioner.

Areas of Expertise:

Litigation Support  - Ms. Johnson is available for both the defense and the plaintiff’s counsel providing a factual synthesis of any issue requiring the medical expertise of a medical care provider. She assists legal teams with navigating medical records and understanding terminology for legal cases such as medical malpractice, personal injury, insurance fraud, and worker’s compensation. Ms. Johnson provides knowledge and insight for care from nursing professionals, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, as well as physician practice.

Advanced Practice Nurse Consulting Services

BRIAN R. PISULA, MD, FAAEM - EMERGENCY MEDICINE SPECIALIST

Specialty Focus: EMTALA, transfer, care / assessment of prisoners, sepsis, heart attack / MI, trauma, airway, pulmonary embolism, stroke, meningitis, pneumonia, fracture, dislocation, COVID-19, ectopic pregnancy, testicular torsion, aortic dissection, allergic reaction, AMA, capacity, PA/NP supervision, spinal abscess

Education: Emergency Medicine Residency Training, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Medical Doctorate , University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry; Bachelors of Science , University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Brian R. Pisula on COVID-19 Vaccinations

Additional Information: Practicing full-time in Emergency Medicine for over 9 years. Has evaluated over 30,000 patients in the Emergency Department setting.  Board certified by the American Board of Emergency Medicine. Experience in multiple practice settings including level-one trauma centers, academic institutions, and low-resource facilities without broad specialty support. 

Professorships in Emergency Medicine at Mercer University and Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine. Has over 2,000 hours of teaching experience with medical students and residents.  Administrative experience including current committee memberships in trauma, medical quality, and surgical quality. Current medical license in Georgia and expert witness certificate in Florida. 

Experience as an expert witness:

1. Retained in 19 cases since May of 2022
2. Worked with both plaintiff and defense 
3. Provided testimony at deposition

Dr. Pisula is focused on delivering high quality, objective, and thorough work in a timely and professional manner. He is available for consultation, chart review, deposition, ADR, and testimony for plaintiff or defense in medical malpractice claims.

Dr. Robert Evans, PhD,  is a Licensed School Psychologist with over 30 years of experience in the behavioral sciences, including completing over 100 Child Custody Evaluations. Dr. Evans serves as a consultant to the medical, legal, and law enforcement community in Florida on Psychological and Educational matters. He consulted with Orange County Public Defender with cases involving arrest and incarceration of children, including Competency Assessments and Insanity Determinations. He has also provided Critical Incident Stress Debriefings to victims of crime in the Central Florida area. 

Litigation Support - Dr. Evans specializes in Parental Alienation cases which are commonly among those classified as High Conflict Divorce cases and he has written a book on Parental Alienation. He provides litigation support to counsel for both Plaintiff and Defense. His services include support with hearing / trial preparations, review of current evaluations, and support during and after the litigation process. 

Dr. Evans has given sworn testimony as a Forensic Psychology expert witness in NY, IL, PA, GA, FL, IA, ID, CO, OH, TX, TN, LA, MA, MD, MO, NC, SC, WA, and OR. 

Areas of Expertise:

• Parental Alienation
• Child Custody Evaluations
• False Allegations of Abuse
• Treatment Considerations for Alienated Children
• Workplace Violence

Mark A. Smith, MD, MBA, FACS, FACHE, CPHQ, is an independent senior Healthcare Consultant and a Practicing Vascular Surgeon as a Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Smith previously served as the Chief Medical Officer with Morrisey Associates Inc/ Morcare LLC for six years. He is a member of HG Healthcare Consultants LLC. Dr. Smith brings over 30 years of clinical practice and hospital management experiences to his work with physicians and hospitals across the United States. He is Board Certified in Vascular Surgery and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, the American College of Healthcare Executives. He is a member of the American College of Physician Executives, the Society for Vascular Surgery and the Southern California Vascular Surgical Society. Litigation Support - Dr. Smith provides expert witness services to attorneys representing plaintiff and defendant. His decades of clinical practice as a surgeon and multiple roles in senior hospital administration to his work on peer review, credentialing, ED call, and other matters involving physicians and hospitals across the United States. He has testified several times in the past 5 years. Areas of Expertise:

View Dr. Smith's Consulting Profile.

James H. Reich, MD, MPH, is a board-certified Forensic Psychiatrist with extensive civil psychiatry experience who has done hundreds of evaluations.

After getting his MD from the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver, Dr. Reich earned his MPH at Yale University and did his psychiatric residency at UC Davis. Dr. Reich has held academic positions at Yale, Iowa, Harvard, and Brown Universities.  Currently, he has teaching appointments at the professor level at both UCSF and Stanford University. Throughout his career, he has published over a hundred peer-reviewed publications. 

Litigation Support - Dr. Reich’s services are available for civil and some criminal law cases. Clients are assured of his personal dedication to each case. He does high quality research, expert evaluations, writes a solid report, and will testify well. Dr. Reich has been deposed over 50 times.

Areas of Expertise:

Leonard J. Weiss, MD, is a Forensic Psychiatrist with unparalleled qualifications, Board-Certified physician in 5 distinct and complementary disciplines applied to Medical-Legal questions:

Dr. Weiss has more than 40 years of experience as a physician. He has been in practice for more than 20 years as a Board-Certified Psychiatrist, Forensic Psychiatrist and Addiction Psychiatry specialist, preceded by more than 2 decades in Internal Medicine.

As an Addiction Psychiatry specialist, Dr. Weiss developed and served as Chief of the first Dual Diagnosis (Addiction) program at Michael Reese Hospital of the University of Chicago. He has served as Medical Director of Austin Lakes Hospital.

Before pursuing his interest in psychiatry, Dr. Weiss practiced Internal Medicine in Michigan where he maintains a Medical License. He has treated patients in psychiatric practice in Chicago and Atlanta. In 2013 he relocated to Austin, Texas where he has a private clinical psychiatric practice, Psychiatry Austin.

Dr. Weiss graduated from Wayne State University Medical School and MIT (Mathematics), with residency training in Internal Medicine, Fellowship in Clinical Nutrition, and Psychiatry at, respectively, the University of Michigan Henry Ford Hospital, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York (Fellow) and Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.

Litigation Support: Dr. Weiss has special training and experience in the application of psychiatric knowledge to legal issues, and works in areas where Mental Health and the Legal System overlap, such as Medical Malpractice and Standard of Care. He offers objective evaluations and psychiatric consultation in a wide variety of legal matters, including expert testimony, as well as clinical work with perpetrators and victims.

Dr. Weiss provides IMEs and expert opinions on mental health questions via written report, deposition, or courtroom testimony. He works with attorneys, courts, and other parties involved in actual or potential litigation. His research and assessment and his clinical practice cover areas such as:

Areas of Expertise: