Thursday, November 11, 2004

11th Circuit Upholds Exclusion of Expert Affidavit as Discovery Sanction

In a published opinion affirming the trial court's award of summary judgment in a Title VII action alleging racial discrimination, the Eleventh Circuit has upheld the district court's exclusion of an affidavit from a statistical expert for noncompliance with the disclosure requirements of Fed. R. Civ. P. 26. Plaintiffs had originally designated the statistician as a fact witness. They subsequently listed him as an expert in discovery responses but never provided a report. See Cooper v. Southern Co., No. 03-12230 (11th Cir. Nov. 10, 2004) (Anderson, Carnes, & Marcus, JJ.).

posted by pn at 10:00 AM  

1 Comments:

Anonymous writes ...

As you the court documents that you posted discuss,the judge in this case denied the plaintiff's motion for class certification; the appeals court affirmed the trial courts decision.

Blog 702 commented on the exclusion of one of the statistical experts in the case for non-compliance wiht the disclosure requirments of Fed R. Civ. R. 26.

The part of the case Blog 702 commented on was interesting, but from a statistical and economic expert standpoint, the more interesting part of the appeals court opinion deals with the way that the trial judge did not exclude the statistical evidence of the main plaintiff's statistical expert under Daubert.

Instead, the judge allowed the plaintiff's expert's analysis into evidence, but found that due to the deficiencies in the plaintiff's statistical report, the court could not actually determine if there was a real earnings gap between African-American and White employees at the company.

In a very important way, the manner in which the trial court used the plaintiff's report appears to represents a 'step up' from just excluding the plaintiff's report under Daubert. As economists and statistical experts, we are finding the level of knowledge that the trial courts have concerning statistical matters in employment cases is growing. It will be interesting to watch this trend.

Thanks for the post


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(www.lostcompensation.com)

9:23 AM  

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Fed. R. Evid. 702: If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.