Florida has a history of wavering when it comes to the standard for admissibility of expert testimony. Not too long ago, the state Supreme Court frustrated legislative efforts to move the state from the Frye standard to the Daubert standard only to reverse itself recently by announcing the adoption of Daubert. Read more >>

The DOL’s aggressive oversight strategy concerning ESOPs has led to a number of controversial lawsuits, including, most recently, the Acosta v. Vinoskey case, which, in the past few months, went to trial over the DOL's overpayment claim. Read more >>

If more proof is necessary to show that courts across all legal fields dive deep into the details of valuation testimony, a recent damages case that arose in the context of a condemnation proceeding should do the trick. Read more >>

A decision from the Supreme Court recently led New Jersey to adopt key Daubert factors for determining the admissibility of expert testimony, but the high court’s ruling also expresses a reluctance to fully embrace the Daubert standard. Read more >>

In a developing ESOP case, the government recently suffered a setback when the court agreed with the trustee that portions of the damages testimony the government’s expert proposed failed to hold up under the Daubert reliability prong. Read more >>

When, in a Mississippi accounting malpractice case, the trial court used an outside "technical advisor" to determine the admissibility of the parties’ proposed expert testimony, the Daubert hearing assumed a whole other dimension. It was no longer simply a battle between the opposing experts, but an occasion for outside experts to judge the work of the parties’ experts. Read more >>

Missouri's governor recently signed into law a bill in favor of adopting the Daubert standard applicable to the admissibility of expert testimony. The move by the governor apparently is the first in several major tort reform measures he hopes to accomplish during his term. Read more >>

Class actions have their own rules, including when it comes to expert testimony. An unresolved issue is whether damages expert testimony is subject to a Daubert inquiry at the class certification stage, before the court has approved the request to proceed as a class action. The U.S. Supreme Court has yet to give clear guidance, but defendants are increasingly proactive and move to exclude the testimony at the beginning of the litigation in an attempt to thwart class certification and knock the case out early. Read more >>

BV experts take the stand in a high-stakes Tax Court case that pits the IRS against the estate of Michael Jackson. Read more >>

Appraisers working on litigated disputes face special challenges. Several workshops at the recent AICPA conference in Nashville provided insights and survival tips that benefit both the seasoned financial expert witness and the upstart. Read more >>

A drawn-out damages case in which a startup compression sportswear company sued the defendant "private label" manufacturer over an abandoned licensing deal promised to make the plaintiff rich but ultimately ended with nominal damages. Read more >>

The plaintiff, representing the debtor enterprises, sued executives of related family-run consumer lending and retail businesses that had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy over allegedly fraudulent transfers. Read more >>

In litigation, attacks on expert opinions are par for the course, but a sound expert report can ward off a Daubert challenge and clear the way to admission at trial, as a recent fraud case illustrates. Read more >>

There is no absolute requirement to develop a reasonable royalty based on the Georgia-Pacific framework. That's the takeaway from a Daubert ruling in which the court denied the defendant's motion to preclude the testimony of the opposing damages expert, who determined a reasonable royalty based on market data instead of the customary Georgia-Pacific factors. Read more >>

One error in an extensive economic analysis does not automatically call into question the entire expert opinion, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals recently said in the context of a securities fraud lawsuit involving the drug giant Pfizer. With this pronouncement the appeals court resuscitated a class action that had died after the district court excluded the plaintiffs' loss causation and damages expert under Daubert based on errors in the expert's event study. Deprived of the testimony, the plaintiffs were unable to prove two critical elements of their claim. Read more >>

Judge Laro reminded experts to guard against domineering attorneys who insist on reviewing draft opinions and seek to nudge an expert into achieving a predetermined result. Valuation experts need to know the discovery rules (Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) rather than assume that all of the attorney-expert communication is protected. Read more >>

As a damages expert, what do you do when your own client has destroyed vital financial information? Two highly educated finance professionals working on a contract case solved this dilemma by relying exclusively on the opposing side's sales projections, only to see their analysis buckle under a Daubert challenge. Read more >>