Machinery Accident Prevention Expert Witnesses: 11

Bryan Netherland is a Safety Expert Witness and consultant with more than 15 years of experience building and leading OSHA Compliance and Risk Management programs across manufacturing, logistics, and industrial operations, including Fortune 10 companies. Through Seek Safety Consulting, he provides litigation support and expert analysis to attorneys handling workplace injury, premises liability, and industrial accident cases nationwide.

Litigation Support - Mr. Netherland's work centers on standard of care, hazard recognition, and risk foreseeability. He evaluates whether a company's safety policies, training, inspections, and management systems met generally accepted safety practices, and produces clear, defensible reports built to hold up under cross-examination. Mr. Netherland is available for case evaluation, report preparation, deposition, and trial testimony for both plaintiff and defense counsel.

OHSA Matters: https://seeksafetyconsulting.com/osha-expert-witness

Safety Matters: https://seeksafetyconsulting.com/safety-expert-witness 

Premises Liability: https://seeksafetyconsulting.com/premises-liability-expert-witness 

Areas of Expertise:

Before founding his firm, Bryan led global workplace health and safety standards across global operations affecting more than 50,000 employees. He has further directed EHS programs for several national and international manufacturers. He holds the Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Certified Safety and Health Official (CSHO), and Associate in Risk Management (ARM) credentials, along with an MS in Occupational Safety and Health and an MBA. Bryan has participated in or led over 100 incident investigations and is trained as a TapRoot® Advanced Root Cause Analysis Team Leader.  Bryan currently serves as an adjunct professor of occupational safety and stays practiced at explaining complex standards in plain terms a jury can follow.

Greg Gerganoff, CSP, Esq., possesses extensive experience in safety compliance and practice involving OSHA and MSHA.  He obtained is law degree from Western Michigan University, Cooley Law School and practiced general civil law for approximately 12 years in Colorado prior to entering the safety profession. Mr. Gerganoff earned a Certified Safety Professional certification and has 18 years of field safety experience in mining, oil and gas, construction, manufacturing, power plant outages, and light rail construction.

His professional safety experience includes OSHA / MSHA Safety field work and compliance with experience in the heavy construction, manufacturing, light rail construction, power plant outages, public schools, oil and gas, mining, pipeline, and trenching and excavation industries.

• Authorized Outreach Trainer for OSHA General Industry.
• PEC Safeland Basic and Core instructor (Oil and gas).
• MSHA Approved Instructor (Blue Card) for Surface, Metal/nonmetal.
• Member of the American Society of Safety Professionals.

Litigation Support: Mr. Gerganoff assists with discovery questions regarding safety matters. Safety opinions based upon statutory, administrative, judicial rulings and related industry association safety policies ancillary to OSHA and MSHA.  Mr. Gerganoff is retained by attorneys for both Plaintiff and Defendant. Some of the subject matter litigation he has handled include:

View Greg Gerganoff's Consulting Profile.

Expert Background: Dr. Thomas L. Read is the Principal and CEO at A. Read Consulting, LLC. He received his PhD. from Stanford University in 1972 and has over 25 years of manufacturing experience in electronics, metallurgy, factory safety, failure analysis, glass fracture, glass failure and bottle failure. As a member of the electronics industry, he has earned process patents and has an extensive background in manufacturing techniques. In parallel, Dr. Read has spent over twenty five years as a consultant to attorneys and engineers. He has given more than 100 depositions and has appeared in court numerous times. Company Profile: Read Consulting, LLC is a full service laboratory providing services in the following areas:

• Failure Analysis; Factory Safety and Personal Injury (including machine guards and manufacturing safety)
• Glass Failure Analysis - Glass Fracture, Glass Failures and Bottle Failure
• Metal and Ceramic Failure
• Grinding Wheel Failures
• Intellectual Property and Patent Disputes
• Product Liability and Product Quality
• Manufacturing Disagreements (such as Intellectual Property, Failed equipment and Contract Disputes)
• Reverse Engineering

R. Kevin Smith P.E., D.F.E. has been a specialist in Engineering Forensic Safety and Design for 44 years. He has consulted on over 1,000 matters nationwide. Mr. Smith is a registered professional engineer and holds a BSME and MMAE from the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. He is board certified forensic engineer through NAFE. He specialties include  Material Handling Equipment Safety, including lift trucks, dock safety, truck loading, conveyors, aerial work platforms, Construction Equipment Safety, Trucking Industry Safety including safe loading procedures and interactions at loading/unloading facilities, and Accident Reconstruction.

He is an active member of the committee that writes the Safety Standard for Low Lift and High Lift Trucks (ASME/ANSI B56.1) for over 40 years. He also serves on the B56.6 committee (rough terrain lift trucks) and the ANSI A92.5 and A92.6 subcommittees (self-propelled elevating work platforms), as well as the A92.20, A92.22, A92.22 series of ANSI standards for MEWPs (Mobile Elevating Work Platforms).

 Litigation Support - Mr. Smith formerly worked for Triodyne, Inc. for over 15 years as a forensic engineer/principal engineer. As President of R. K. Smith Engineering Inc., for 28 years, he currently has a laboratory for examination and testing, and owns or has access to varied testing equipment and tools.He has testified at depositions and trials on several hundred matters. Mr. Smith has performed hundreds of investigations into product failures involving injury and property damage, and has reconstructed numerous accidents. His expertise is available to counsel representing both Plaintiff and Defendant. Mr. Smith also was previously on the Adjunct Math faculty at Prairie State College for 13 years. 

Areas of Expertise:

View R. Kevin Smith's Consulting Profile.

Dr. J. P. Purswell, PhD, PE, CPE has extensive experience in Human Factors, Ergonomics, and Safety Engineering. He holds a doctorate in Industrial & Systems Engineering from Virginia Tech. He has taught Safety Engineering and Ergonomics in the Industrial Engineering Department at CSU-Pueblo since 1999. 

A member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and the American Industrial Hygiene Association, Dr. Purswell also served as the Chair of the Industrial Engineers PE exam from 2005 to 2009. He continues to serve on the committee which is responsible for the preparation of the national professional engineering examination in industrial engineering. 

Dr. Purswell is the author of more than 20 publications and presentations on Product Safety, Occupational Safety, Printed Warnings, and Auditory Warnings. Examples of products addressed include silica, asbestos, cleaning chemicals, gasoline containers, and recreational equipment. Dr. Purswell maintains NIST-calibrated equipment for the measurement of light, sound, force, and whole-body and hand-arm vibration in addition to standard photo and video equipment. 

Litigation Support - An Expert Witness in the legal industry since 1997, Dr. Purswell has been qualified as an expert in state and federal courts across the nation in safety engineering, including safety analysis techniques such as Fault Tree Analysis and FMEA as well as product warnings / instructions and OSHA compliance issues. His services include site inspections, document review, drafting Rule 26-compliant reports, deposition, and trial testimony. He has been retained by attorneys for both Plaintiff (40%) and Defense (60%) more than 100 times, has been deposed more than 100 times, and has testified at trial over 20 times. 

Areas of Expertise:

View Dr. Purswell's Consulting Profile.

Mechanical Solutions, Inc. (MSI) performs litigation support through its extensive engineering capabilities, and when required, through expert testimony. MSI uses advanced finite element analysis (FEA), rotor dynamics, and torsional analysis tools, and uses computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to analyze 3-D steady or unsteady fluid flows and heat transfer, enabled by its 230 high speed processor supercomputers.

MSI also uses top-of-the-line testing equipment, including multichannel FFT analyzers (up to 200 simultaneous channels) to accurately read the outputs of various vibration, stress/strain, and pressure sensors, as a function of both time and frequency. As a unique additional test capability, MSI uses motion magnification video cameras to amplify and display scene vibration by 1000x. MSI uses calibrated exciters while equipment remains running, to locate structural, rotor, and acoustic natural frequency resonances as they exist at any particular operating point, without interfering with machinery operation. In addition, MSI performs stress, acoustic, dynamic pressure pulsation, electric current spectrum, and aero/hydraulic performance testing.

Areas of Expertise:

Solving Challenges with Rotating Machinery Vibrations

William D. Marscher, PE, performs expert witnessing and engineering work in the field of Fluid Systems and their Rotating and Reciprocating Machinery, particularly large turbines, generators, compressors, and pumps. His typical work responsibilities include design, analysis, and testing of all types of plant machinery, as well as other types of fluid and mechanical systems. Mr. Marscher has background in various types of turbines (including hydraulic, steam, and gas), as well as various types of pumps, including centrifugal as well as positive displacement (e.g. reciprocating, gear, rotary, and screw).

Mr. Marscher's expert witnessing experience includes 27 cases over the course of his 50+ year career, for which he provided detailed engineering reports in support of the case. This legal support experience includes witnessing in front of tribunals four times, and testifying in Federal Court in four cases. He also has performed depositions 11 times. 

For the past 45 years, Mr. Marscher has been a voting member of the ASTM Fatigue Standards Committee E9, as well as the ASTM Wear & Erosion Standards Committee G2. He is also the past Board of Directors Chairman for the Machinery Failure Prevention Technology Society (MFPT), and has been active in the Vibration Institute. Mr. Marscher is a 23-year member of the Texas A&M Turbine-Pump Users Symposium Advisory Committee (essentially the Board of Directors for the Symposium). For ASME, he was Chair of the Predictive Maintenance committee and was Organizing and Presiding Chair of the 1993 RoCon Rotating Machinery Conference and the 1995 Tribology Conference.

Dr. Edward Bennett is MSI’s VP of Fluids Engineering.  Dr. Bennett graduated from the Naval Academy, following which he was a navy test pilot.  Later he received his PhD in Fluid Dynamics from Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Bennett has been a well-known leader in Fluid Dynamics and the Aero/hydrodynamic Design of Turbomachinery for the past thirty plus years.  

In 1995, Dr. Bennett founded ASC Turbo, a design house that combined the CFD software from Advanced Scientific Computing and specialized turbomachinery design software.  During this time, he worked on the development of BladeGen, a 3-dimensional turbomachinery blade geometry kernel, and also performed a key role design work that included the starter turbine and vapor cycle compressor for the F-22 Raptor fighter, several biomechanical cardiac pumps, a LOX rocket turbopump, as well as numerous more “conventional” turbomachinery designs. After this, he served as Director of Turbopumps for Gencorp Aerojet, and authored the hydraulic design methodology that is still in use by that organization.

At MSI, Dr. Bennett oversees fluid dynamic design and analysis of pumps, compressors, and turbines, including various sizes of hydroturbine generators.  This work includes detailed computational fluid dynamic (CFD) analysis, as well as test rig design, and flow loop/ wind tunnel validation testing.  Recently, he has supported major law firms with expert report writing and detailed two-phase flow unsteady CFD analysis of 100MW and 400 MW hydroturbines in the US and Canada.

Paul A. Boyadjis is Director of Rotating Machinery Analysis for MSI.  Mr. Boyadjis has a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Lehigh University where he graduated summa cum laude.  He has over 35 years of diverse experience in the analysis and Design of Centrifugal Pumps and Pumping Systems, as well as Centrifugal Compressors. His specialty includes complex 3D solids modeling for stress and vibration analysis using advanced finite element techniques, and he has worked as a lead analytical engineer for major manufacturers. 

Mr. Boyadjis is also an expert at rotordynamics, and field testing. He has enjoyed participating as a Hydraulic Institute Standards Partner for over a decade, and became vice chair of its Vibration Committee, and was named Standards Partner of the Year in 2021.  Paul played a key role in various standards. 

Years ago, Mr. Mr. Boyadjis developed the solids modeling and advanced finite element analysis capabilities at the Government Marine Business unit of Ingersoll-Rand, and wrote many of the structural and vibration analysis procedures for that division. As mergers took place, he then transferred these analytical capabilities to the Research and Development group of Ingersoll-Dresser Pump and later Flowserve.

While with MSI, Mr. Boyadjis has conducted detailed 3D finite element analysis of failed casings and impellers, performing forensic investigations, and when necessary, providing successful design enhancements for industrial and municipal customers. He has directed or participated in many testing and troubleshooting projects, particularly for water and wastewater pumping systems.

View MSI's Consulting Profile.

LECS (UK) Limited is an International Engineering Firm specializing in Lifts, Escalators, Facade Access and Funiculars (cable cars). With over 20 years of trading history, their specialized engineers are qualified, experienced and carry full professional insurances. Members of the engineering team have all worked for major contractors and have held positions including Senior Engineer, Project Manager and Commissioning / Test Engineers. As a result, LECS has over 150 years of accumulated experience within the key staff of the engineering team and currently employs 10% of the world’s graduates of the MSc in Lift Engineering from the University of Northampton.

LECS (UK) Limited is a member of independent bodies such as ACE, BSI and ConstructionLine. They have an accredited Quality Assurance scheme to ISO 9001 (2008) and are regularly audited. They provide services for many market sectors including overseas projects, hotels, retail, commercial health, local authority and heritage. The engineers at LECS (UK) have extensive experience as Expert Witnesses and Consultants in litigation involving lifts and escalators. Their services include preparing expert reports in accordance with Regulation 35 of the Civil Procedure Rules and also in Criminal cases. They are also available for adjudication and arbitration cases. LECS (UK) expert witness services have been called on in overseas situations including Gran Canaria, Dubai, Hong Kong, Spain and Turkey.

Services Include:

• Expert Witness - Litigation Support
• Statutory Inspections
• Maintenance Audits
• Acquisition & Condition Surveys
• Project Management
• Traffic Analysis
• Risk Assessments
• New Installations & Modernization Specifications
• Maintenance Specifications
• Training
• Portfolio Management

Mark Franklin has over 28 years of experience in Environmental, Health, and Safety Management, Training and Consulting-across many industries, including construction, manufacturing, chemical, pharmaceutical and others. Mr. Franklin has applied industry experience in chemical emergency response, hazardous waste management, safety and environmental program management, OSHA regulatory compliance, and management program auditing (safety, quality, environmental).Mr. Franklin is a highly experienced, dynamic trainer in over 80 individual training topics.

Litigation Support - Mr. Franklin owns the Cove Acre expert witness practice. He leverages his years of experience in Occupational Health and Safety management, consulting, and training for his expert witness clients. He has investigated over 150 incidents, including serious injuries, fatality, chemical spills, and equipment and facility damage. Mr. Franklin's services are available to attorneys representing plaintiff and defendant. Mr. Franklin provides site review, thorough reporting, depositions, and trial testimony as needed.

Areas of Expertise:

Mr. Franklin is a dynamic and engaging trainer who can take often-complicated Occupational Health and Safety regulations and explain them so everyone in the audience can understand the meaning and intent. For deposition, in front of a Jury, or in front of a full conference room, his professional approach, calm demeanor, and organized presentation style ensure a thorough understanding for all. 

Reviewing regulations and their interpretations, researching industry and regulatory-body accepted best practices, reading peer-reviewed publications, and applying years of experience in general industry and the construction industry are all tools Mr. Franklin utilizes to provide thorough, reliable, and organized expert opinion reports.

Dax B. Wells, PE, is an experienced Mechanical Engineer with nearly 20 years in the design, development, testing, and failure analysis of Aerial Lifts and Agricultural Machinery. His career includes direct responsibility for engineering, product safety, structural analysis, prototype development, field evaluations, compliance testing, reliability assessments, and root-cause investigations for complex equipment systems.

Mr. Wells has extensive, hands-on experience with aerial work platform entrapment and tip over cases, including multiple serious-injury and fatal events. His work includes analyzing the interaction between equipment design, operator interaction, platform motion, safety devices, and environmental/jobsite factors. He brings a unique combination of technical engineering expertise, industry standards knowledge, and practical field experience that is critical for accurately assessing liability, causation, and defect allegations.

Litigation Support - Mr. Wells supports attorneys on both plaintiff and defense matters, including early case evaluation. He understands the urgency, clarity, and documentation standards necessary for litigation. He has conducted extensive and in-depth equipment failure analyses in support of attorneys for case evaluation and backing. With extensive experience in product design, development, and failure analysis, Mr. Wells has worked closely with attorneys on equipment assessments for safety risks and causation evaluations. He has experience in expert consulting including testimonial & evidence reviews, equipment assessment, case strategy, and report writing.

Areas of Expertise:

Mr. Wells possesses a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering. Completed a master’s of science degree with an emphasis in product development and manufacturing systems.  Licensed professional engineer (PE) and trained equipment operator on boom lifts, scissor lifts, and numerous types of construction & agricultural equipment.

Anthony S. Boom is an Electrical Engineer and Escalator Controls Expert Witness with over 35 years in the escalator business. Currently providing expert witness services though Cetek, Inc., he spent the last three decades working as an Electrical Engineer with Montgomery Escalator and KONE R&D, escalator division.

Three patents Mr. Boom received while working at Montgomery and at KONE include one for Safety Switch and Method of Checked Redundancy, utilized in all of the current transit escalator safety circuits; an Apparatus and Method for Variable Torque Braking of Escalator and Moving Walkways; and a Method and Conveyor System for KONE Sleep Mode Controller.

Litigation Support - Mr. Boom offers expert witness services to attorneys representing plaintiff and defense. Services include expert witness testimony, written or oral affidavits, site inspections, technical investigations, technical review documentation, etc. 

Areas of Expertise:

Background Experience and Accomplishments:

• Designed and developed many custom escalator electrical controls. He also designed and wrote the code for Montgomery Escalator and KONE escalator controls, including the controls for the Trans 180 escalator platform (the ES373’s model).
• Developed diagnostic guides for escalator controllers and braking systems and technical bulletins for all aspects of the escalator electrical control system.
• Oversaw the CSA certification of the escalator control and brake systems.
• Supervised and trained electrical and mechanical engineers.
• Provided tech support to KONE personnel regarding Otis controls and performed power studies on a variety of Otis escalators. 

Selected Case Experience:

• 2022: Escalator at department store, PA: Alleged injury on escalator.
• 2023: High rise transit escalator, NY: Ongoing.
• 2023: Public transportation escalator, NY: Ongoing.  See CV for Full List

David Smith is an experienced mechanical engineer (MS, PE) with seven issued patents. Award-winning inventor. Vice President of Alpine Engineering and Design, a mechanical engineering consulting company with clients around the United States ranging from individual inventors to Fortune 500 companies. Worked on the development of multiple successful products including among other things: aerial lifts, garbage trucks, thrill rides, ziplines, trailers, oil and gas equipment, exercise equipment, manufacturing equipment, and multiple consumer products. 

Graduated Cum Laude with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering. Completed a master's of science degree in mechanical engineering and an MBA with an emphasis in product development. Licensed professional engineer (PE) and certified safety professional in comprehensive practice (CSP). Certified trainer for boom lifts, scissor lifts, rough terrain, and counterbalanced forklifts. Over 10 years of experience in product development, patents, equipment safety, and risk assessments. 

Experienced expert witness having drafted over 200 reports/declarations in patent cases and catastrophic injury and death cases. Designed and built multiple custom testing devices to obtain data and evaluate opinions. Created multiple demonstratives to explain the mechanics and circumstances of accident sequences and patented devices. Testified in deposition 11 times and in trial once.