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Mr. Jaffe helped us minimally.25 He admitted at trial that
he works with Commonwealth in its everyday business operation,
including helping it develop an innovative term life insurance
product and rendering critical advice to it on an unrelated
litigation matter. An expert witness loses his or her
impartiality when he or she is too closely connected with one of
the parties. See, e.g., Estate of Kaufman v. Commissioner, supra
(the Commissioner’s expert was inherently biased because he was
the Commissioner’s employee). An expert witness also is
unhelpful when he or she is merely a biased spokesman for the
advancement of his or her client’s litigating position. When we
see and hear an expert who displays an unyielding allegiance to
the party who is paying his or her bill, we need not and
generally will not hesitate to disregard that testimony as
untrustworthy. See Estate of Halas v. Commissioner, 94 T.C. 570,
577 (1990); Laureys v. Commissioner, 92 T.C. 101, 129 (1989); see
also Jacobson v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1989-606 (when experts
act as advocates, “the experts can be viewed only as hired guns
of the side that retained them, and this not only disparages
their professional status but precludes their assistance to the
Court in reaching a proper and reasonably accurate conclusion”).
25 In addition to the reasons stated infra, Mr. Jaffe’s
knowledge of critical facts was generally influenced by his
relationship with Commonwealth, he relied incorrectly on
erroneous data to reach otherwise unsupported conclusions, and he
concededly did not review all pertinent facts.
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