Jurors — who likely get their ideas about the legal system from popular television dramas — expect to hear the truth from the witness stand. It's a reasonable expectation. After all, witnesses take an oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And many witnesses are pegged as experts with impressive sounding credentials.

Unfortunately, these factors don't guarantee that witness testimony is credible, or even particularly accurate. In the case of an expert witness, testimony may be skewed to favor whichever side is paying the bills. After all, you can manipulate data or dredge up a study to prove any point, especially when a potential multi-million dollar award is at stake.

Thankfully, a Corpus Christi judge recently stood up for the sanctity of the courtroom and said enough to misrepresentations by so-called expert witnesses and the personal injury lawyers who hired them.

U.S. District Court Judge Janis Graham Jack struck a blow against both junk science and against abusive lawsuits when she issued an opinion criticizing the lawyers and thousands of "bogus diagnoses" that are part of silicosis cases being heard in her courtroom.

She also went further and took the unusual step of fining a Texas law firm for its role in producing the questionable evidence, saying she thought the "diagnoses were manufactured for money." While judges have the power to issue fines against lawyers who abuse our court system and to throw out frivolous cases, this power isn't used nearly enough.

In these cases — and in thousands of other asbestos and silicosis lawsuits pending in Texas courts — diagnoses were made by mobile screening units paid for by personal injury lawyers and staffed by non-medical personnel. The results were signed off by doctors (also paid by personal injury lawyers) who never saw the patient. Those lawyers gain a plaintiff, and possibly a bigger award, for every "positive" exposure discovered.

This is an abuse not only of our court system, but an affront to those who really are suffering from asbestos or silicosis exposure. Their justice and compensation is delayed, denied and diluted by the tens of thousands of questionable claims.

This past spring, the Texas Legislature passed a new law that will curb abusive asbestos and silicosis litigation. But the cases already pending in our courts must be addressed.

Unfortunately, the Legislature failed to act on a proposal that would have helped curb the practice of junk science. House Bill 2306 would have set standards for testimony by out-of-state physician witnesses. Currently, doctors can travel into Texas and testify without fear of sanction or reprisal if they are found to be twisting the truth.

HB 2306 would have treated these out-of-state physician witnesses just like Texas doctors who testify, holding them to standards and subjecting them to possible penalties.

When junk science is allowed in our courts, the entire civil justice system is tainted. Junk science props up frivolous and questionable health care lawsuits that scare consumers, keep beneficial medications off the market, drive up health care costs and limit medical research and innovation.

Hopefully the Legislature will again consider — and this time pass — measures to crack down on junk science when it convenes in regular session in January 2007. Until then, we'll have to depend on level-headed judges like Judge Jack — and hopefully others who will follow her lead — to have the integrity to bring down their gavel on junk science.

Dale is an Austin attorney and a member of the board of directors of Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse of Central Texas.