Expert
witnesses play a big role in most - if not all - of the court cases that get reported here on
RF Cafe.
IMS ExpertServices is a law firm specializing in expert witnesses. Every month or so they
send me an article about specific court cases that could be of interest to my visitors. This
particular installment is titled, "Experts
Face Fewer Challenges in Court, Survey Says" and reports that after a decade of increases,
in the year 2011 a large drop in the numbers of court challenges to expert witnesses' testimony
has been observed. Surprisingly, nearly half of the experts' opinions were successfully challenged.
The leading reason for dismissing expert testimony: lack of reliability. Who would've guessed
that a person getting paid to advocate a point of view might not be the most credible client.
- Kirt B.
Reprinted with permission.
Experts Face Fewer Challenges in Court, Survey Says Posted by
Robert Ambrogi,
Contributing Author on 2012/10/30
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Robert J. Ambrogi is a Massachusetts lawyer who represents clients at the intersection
of law, media and technology. A news media veteran, he is the only person ever to hold the
top editorial positions at the two leading national U.S. legal newspapers, the National
Law Journal and Lawyers Weekly USA. He is also internationally known for his writing
and blogging about the Internet and technology. |
How often is expert testimony challenged in court? What types of experts are most likely
to be challenged? How successful are those challenges? Do judges' rulings on experts hold up
on appeal? The answers to these and other questions are presented in a fascinating study
that surveyed thousands of challenges to expert witnesses over an 11-year period in state and
federal courts. Conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, the study focused on cases involving
financial experts, but also drew broader conclusions applicable to experts of all types.
Covering the years 2000-2011, the span of the study begins the year after the Supreme Court
decided Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, the 1999 decision in which the court extended its 1993
opinion in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. to all types of expert testimony. While
the survey found a total of 6,919 challenges to experts, it considered only the 5,360 cases
that expressly referenced Kumho Tire. Not surprisingly, the survey found a steady annual
increase in the number of challenges to experts, from 253 in 2000 to 879 in 2010. What was surprising,
however, is that 2011 brought a drop in the number of challenges, down to 778 for the year.
Of those, 335 were successful in excluding expert testimony in whole or in part. Overall
from 2000-2011, 45 percent of expert challenges were successful in excluding testimony in whole
or in part. Half the challenges failed to exclude any testimony. In 4 percent of the cases,
judges made no decision either way. The percentage of successful challenges remained relatively
consistent throughout the period of the survey. Large Drop in Challenging Financial
Experts With regard to financial experts, the study found an even greater drop
in the number of challenges. Whereas challenges to financial experts rose steadily from 2001-2009,
the number of challenges fell by 40 percent during 2010 and 2011. Even though the number of
challenges fell, the rate of their success went up, with 54 percent of challenges in 2011 succeeding
in whole or in part. Challenges to financial experts fared differently in different courts,
the survey found. Within the federal court system, challenges to financial experts were most
likely to be raised in the Second, Fifth and Sixth Circuits. Those three circuits accounted
for 40 percent of all challenges to financial experts. The Second Circuit alone accounted for
15 percent. While those circuits heard the greatest number of challenges, the circuits
where challenges were most likely to succeed were the Eleventh and Tenth, with success rates
of 63 percent and 62 percent, respectively. The circuits where challenges were least likely
to succeed were the Third and First, with success rates of 34 percent and 38 percent, respectively.
Not all financial experts are equal in their susceptibility to challenge, the survey found.
Economists and accountants are the most frequently challenged types of financial experts, each
representing 24 percent of all challenges to financial experts. The largest percentage of successful
challenges involved those that targeted appraisers, with 51 percent of those challenges succeeding
in whole or part from 2000-2011. In addition to looking at how often challenges succeeded,
it analyzed why they succeeded. Leading Reasons for Excluding Experts
The leading reason judges excluded experts was reliability. This was true for every year
covered by the survey. Of the 561 challenges that resulted in full or partial exclusion of financial
expert testimony, lack of reliability was a cause in 380 instances, or 68 percent of the cases.
In just 2011, lack of reliability was a cause in 76 percent of the cases. "When a financial
expert is excluded for lack of reliability, it's most frequently caused by a lack of valid data,"
the survey concluded. "Particularly, there is more often a problem with the quality of the data
… available to the financial expert or how the data is reflected in the analytical framework
of the financial expert rather than the misuse of an otherwise acceptable methodology."
Two other leading reasons for the exclusion of financial expert testimony were lack of relevance
(38 percent of cases) and lack of qualifications (19 percent of cases). Of course, courts sometime
cite multiple reasons for excluding expert testimony. Of the cases examined for this survey,
28 percent of exclusions were based on multiple criteria. Most Rulings Affirmed
on Appeal A judge's decision to exclude expert testimony is not always the end
of the story, of course. When a judge's Daubert decision is reviewed on appeal, how is it likely
to fare? For 2011 only, the study looked at federal and state appellate court rulings
on Daubert issues. It found 68 challenges to experts. Of those, the lower court had excluded
the testimony of 37 experts, accepted the testimony of 29 experts, and not considered the Daubert
criteria for two experts. With respect to all but 10 of the experts, the appellate courts
affirmed the lower courts. For those 10 experts, the appellate courts overturned the lower courts'
rulings. Six of the cases involved financial experts, of which two were overturned. Of
the 10 cases where the lower court ruling was overturned, the appellate courts allowed four
experts to testify at trial, excluded the testimony of one expert, and remanded the case to
the trial court to apply or reapply the Daubert standards for five experts. The full
study,
Daubert Challenges to Financial Experts, is available from PriceWaterhouseCoopers.
Robert Ambrogi, Contributing Author – who has written
27 posts
on BullsEye Blog.
Bob Ambrogi is the only person to hold the top editorial positions at both the National
Law Journal and Lawyers Weekly USA. In addition, he formerly served as director of the Litigation
Services division at American Lawyer Media. He is an experienced attorney, ADR professional,
writer and legal technologist.
This article was originally published in
BullsEye,
a newsletter distributed by IMS
ExpertServices™. IMS Expert Services is the
premier expert witness search firm
in the legal industry, focused exclusively on providing custom expert witness searches to attorneys.
To read this and other legal industry
BullsEye
publications, please visit IMS Expert Services' recent articles. For your next expert witness
search, call us at 877-838-8464 or visit our website.
Posted
11/25/2012
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