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Mealey's Daubert

January 28, 2025
Magistrate: Expert Can Opine On Financial Impacts Related To Company Acquisition

CASPER, Wyo. — Companies facing a breach of contract suit that moved to strike an expert from testifying may “clearly disagree with his conclusion” but that is no reason for exclusion under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., a federal magistrate judge in Wyoming ruled.
January 28, 2025
Trial Court Must Reconsider Expert’s Admissibility Through Daubert-Rochkind Hearing

BALTIMORE — While declining to rule on the admissibility of an expert’s testimony in a medical malpractice suit, a Maryland appeals court ruled that the trial court erred in refusing to reconsider its ruling that excluded his testimony in light of new information and vacated a summary judgment award and remanded the case.
January 27, 2025
Experts Featured In Mealey's Daubert Report

Entries are ordered in alphabetical order of the expert in each area of expert testimony. Experts appeared in the January to December 2024 issues of Mealey’s Daubert Report.
January 27, 2025
Oklahoma Supreme Court: Litigant Can’t Subpoena An Expert’s Financial Records

OKLAHOMA CITY — Although a litigant may discover an expert witness’ compensation on a current lawsuit, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a party may not subpoena an expert to learn compensation on past cases for the purpose of uncovering potential bias, stating that there are other methods of discovering bias that do not invade a witness’s privacy.
January 27, 2025
No Error In Excluding Experts, Dismissing Claim In Suit Against Driver, Employer

RICHMOND, Va. — The Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said a district court did not abuse its discretion in barring experts from testifying on the timing of inclement weather that a tractor-trailer driver encountered before a crash or in excluding expert testimony on whether the driver was acting within the standard of care.
January 24, 2025
Bad Faith Case For Handling Of Claim Settles After 2 Experts Are Admitted

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A week after a Florida federal court judge ruled that competing experts opining on industry standards for handling a bodily injury claim stemming from a car accident can testify, a woman who sued an insurance company for bad faith for failing to settle the claim notified the court that the parties have reached a settlement.
January 24, 2025
SharkNinja Wins Final Judgment In Faulty Blender Case After Judge Excluded Expert

INDIANAPOLIS — An Indiana federal judge entered final judgment in favor of SharkNinja Operating LLC after finding that an expert retained by a woman who alleges that she was injured by a defective blender was excluded from testifying and the judge granted its motion for summary judgment.
January 24, 2025
Judge Admits Video Expert, Police Practices Experts In Fatal Shooting Case

TACOMA, Wash. — Forensic video experts who reviewed body camera footage of a fatal shooting during a routine traffic stop can testify in a civil rights case, but they cannot opine on what the footage shows or does not show or testify as to standard police practices, a Washington federal judge ruled in largely denying four motions to exclude testimony from the video experts and each side’s police standards experts.
January 23, 2025
9th Circuit: No Rehearing For Playwright In Copyright Row With Studio

SAN FRANCISCO — The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Jan. 22 denied a playwright’s motion for en banc rehearing, standing by its affirmation of a federal judge’s grant of summary judgment in favor of a film studio and related entities the writer accused of copying elements from a stage production she wrote.
January 22, 2025
9th Circuit Finds No Error In Allowing Expert Testimony On Value Of Seized Fentanyl

PASADENA, Calif. — Expert testimony from a law enforcement officer on the retail value of fentanyl seized during a traffic stop is relevant and not unfairly prejudicial, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Jan. 21, affirming a man’s conviction.
January 21, 2025
Judge Rules On What Experts Can Testify To In Suit Over Prisoner Searches

CHICAGO — Experts on both sides of a civil rights violation class action over searches of inmates and their cells can opine on the generally accepted correctional practices, but an Illinois federal judge limited testimony that is unsupported by a methodology found reliable under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc.
January 14, 2025
Judge Excludes Expert Over AI Fabrications, Denies Injunction Of Deepfake Law

MINNEAPOLIS — A federal judge in Minnesota entered a judgment declining to enjoin a state law on Jan. 13 after excluding an artificial intelligence expert who inadvertently included AI-fabricated cites in his declaration about misinformation and finding that the lone plaintiff with standing lacked the harm required for a preliminary injunction.
January 14, 2025
Motion To Exclude Testimony Granted In $1M Long-Term Care Insurance Fraud Dispute

ORLANDO, Fla. — A Florida federal judge granted in part a couple’s motion to exclude expert testimony pursuant to Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Prudential Insurance’s declaratory judgment suit against them seeking to rescind their long-term care (LTC) insurance policies due to the more than $1 million in benefits they allegedly received by purportedly misrepresenting their health and eligibility, finding that some of the testimony by an insurance claims consultant must be excluded because it contains “inadmissible legal conclusions.”
January 13, 2025
Tenn. Federal Judge Allows Expert Witness Testimony In Medical Malpractice Case

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A Tennessee federal judge denied dueling motions to exclude the other party’s causation and standard of care expert witnesses in a medical malpractice case after finding that all four experts meet admissibility standards under state and federal law.
January 13, 2025
U.S. High Court Refuses To Hear Cancer Cluster Appeal

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 13 refused to hear a petition brought by residents whose children were victims of a cancer cluster, which the plaintiffs claimed was caused by soil and groundwater that was contaminated with radiation from a facility owned and operated United Technologies Corp. and Pratt & Whitney Group.
January 13, 2025
After Trial, Judge Finds Disloyalty In ERISA Suit Over Fund Manager’s ESG Efforts

FORT WORTH, Texas — In a Jan. 10 ruling issued after a bench trial in a class action over environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations and the purported proxy voting activism of investment management firms, a Texas federal judge found that American Airlines Inc. and its employee benefits committee breached their fiduciary duty of loyalty but not their duty of prudence.
January 10, 2025
3rd Circuit Finds Expert On Repressed Memories Wrongly Admitted, Vacates Award

PHILADELPHIA — A district court’s decision to admit testimony from an expert witness on repressed memories in a suit alleging past child sexual abuse “fell short of the rigor required by” Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in overturning a $1.5 million award for compensatory and punitive damages.
January 10, 2025
Memory Expert, Missing Evidence Central To Delaware Asbestos Case Developments

WILMINGTON, Del. — A Delaware judge excluded a memory expert in an asbestos pipe case, saying that while a company may challenge testimony, it may not do so through expert opinions because the testimony trespasses on the jury’s role of determining witness credibility. Meanwhile, the plaintiff in the case moved for an adverse instruction about missing evidence, saying a company “born under the specter of asbestos” should have known that it would face litigation, a move J-M Manufacturing Co. Inc. (JMM) portrayed as a coordinated effort to hamstring its ability to raise a defense.
January 09, 2025
Judge Finds Probiotic Infant Product Patent Claims To Be Invalid

CHICAGO — A federal judge in Illinois granted summary judgment in favor of a defendant biopharmaceutical company accused of infringing on two patents related to probiotic products for infants, holding that the relevant claims of the patents were anticipated by prior art references.
January 07, 2025
Insurers’ Expert Can Testify On What Did Not Cause Fire, Wash. Federal Judge Says

SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge on Jan. 6 denied a motion to exclude a forensic electrical engineer retained by two insurance companies in a product liability case who ruled out two possible causes of a fire in a recreational vehicle (RV).
December 23, 2024
Florida Federal Judge Allows 5 Rebuttal Experts In Toxic Exposure Case

ORLANDO, Fla. — “Disagreement with an expert’s premises is classic cross-examination fodder” and not grounds for exclusion under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, a federal judge in Florida noted in an order denying five motions to exclude filed in an environmental contamination case.
December 20, 2024
Expert Out In Hurricane Ida Damage Coverage Case; Report Found Unreliable

JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi federal judge granted a home insurer summary judgment in a case brought by a couple who say their claim for damages stemming from a hurricane was not covered after finding that their expert’s testimony on causation is inadmissible.
December 19, 2024
Panel Says Man Failed To Show Causation For His Alleged Chemical Exposure Injuries

NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that a man claiming that he was injured by chemical exposure in the course of his work making a delivery of chemicals to a paper factor failed to establish medical causation and therefore the case was properly dismissed.
December 19, 2024
Parties Debate Expert’s AI Hallucination Errors In AI Law Challenge

MINNEAPOLIS — Plaintiffs urged a federal judge in Minnesota to reject an amended expert declaration, saying that correcting artificial intelligence-crafted hallucinations after briefing concluded would be prejudicial and that the request is untimely. But in opposing exclusion of the expert, Minnesota’s attorney general said that even experts make mistakes and that the AI-generated errors went to the weight of the opinion about a challenge to an AI election misinformation law, not the opinion’s admissibility.
December 18, 2024
Contempt, Stay At Issue In Asbestos Expert Subpoena Case

NEW YORK — An asbestos expert, her hospital employer and Johnson & Johnson, locked in a battle over production of the identities of individuals the expert relied on in a study on talc exposures, briefed a New York Supreme Court justice on whether contempt sanctions are warranted for failure to produce evidence or whether a forthcoming motion to reargue and a pending motion for a protective order stayed an appellate court’s ruling, according to documents filed on the court’s docket.