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Mealey's Daubert

  • 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.

  • December 18, 2024

    9th Circuit Agrees No Similarity Between Stage Show, Television Show

    SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge rightly granted summary judgment in favor of a defendant film studio and associated entities that were accused by a writer of copying elements of a stage play and derivative works she wrote in their ongoing television drama series, a Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held, agreeing with the trial judge that there was no substantial similarity between the works.

  • December 18, 2024

    Government Seeks Exclusion Of Another Witness In Flint Water Tort Claims Act Case

    DETROIT — The U.S. government on Dec. 17 filed a reply brief in Michigan federal court calling for the exclusion of yet another plaintiffs’ expert witness in the $722.4 million Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) lawsuit against the government related to the lead-contaminated water crisis in Flint, Mich., this time on grounds that a doctor’s “lack of medical training disqualifies her from offering testimony that would speculate about the etiologies” of the plaintiffs’ alleged physical conditions related to the contaminated water. 

  • December 17, 2024

    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 March to December 2024 issues of Mealey’s Daubert Report.

  • December 17, 2024

    Expert In Wages Case Cannot Testify On Legality Of Company’s Actions, Judge Says

    KANSAS CITY, Kan. — An expert retained by a landscaping company facing allegations that it failed to properly pay its workers cannot testify, a Kansas federal judge ruled, because his conclusions are entirely improper legal conclusions, which are inadmissible under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc.

  • December 16, 2024

    Expert Excluded, Cannot Opine On How Woman Was Injured In Fall At Restaurant

    SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — An accident reconstructionist retained by a woman who alleges that she was injured after falling from a booth at a Romano’s Macaroni Grill restaurant is inadmissible, a federal magistrate judge in Puerto Rico ruled, because he did not reach his conclusions through a reliable methodology.

  • December 16, 2024

    Judge: Experts Can Opine On Standard Officer Training In Excessive Force Case

    SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge on Dec. 13 ruled that two experts on officer training and policies can testify on behalf of a man suing King County, Wash., and one of its police officers as a representative to the estate of a man who was fatally shot by the officer.

  • December 16, 2024

    Judge Agrees To Limit Testimony Offered In Defense Of Man Charged With Wire Fraud

    SEATTLE — A Washington federal judge partially granted and partially denied the government’s motion to exclude portions of testimony from multiple experts retained by a man criminally charged with four counts of wire fraud.

  • December 16, 2024

    Judge Bars Prosecutorial Standards Expert For Man Wrongfully Convicted Of Murder

    PITTSBURGH — An expert’s testimony fails to support allegations that a prosecutor maliciously solicited and relied on false testimony to secure a conviction for a man who was later exonerated after serving 13 years in prison for three counts of murder stemming from a fire in an apartment complex, a federal magistrate judge ruled in granting a motion to exclude.

  • December 16, 2024

    Florida Appeals Court: Blood Alcohol Levels Expert Wrongly Excluded At DUI Trial

    TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida appeals court on Dec. 13 ordered a new trial for a man convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol after finding that the trial court wrongly excluded testimony from a clinical pharmacologist and toxicologist who would opine that the man’s likely blood alcohol level (BAL) at the time of his arrest was under the legal limit.

  • December 13, 2024

    Medical Expert Retained To Opine On Woman’s Medical Needs After Crash Can Testify

    OXFORD, Miss. — A federal magistrate judge in Mississippi on Dec. 12 agreed to strike one statement from the report of an expert hired to opine on the medical condition of a woman suing for injuries sustained in a car accident but otherwise denied the woman’s motion to exclude his testimony.