The Importance of Good Credentials

The recent decision 10th circuit decision clearly shows the importance of using a qualified economist to calculate economic damages. The Court found in Lifewise Master Funding v Telebank that:

[The Plaintiffs' expert] was not an expert in damages analysis or in any of the techniques used to create the September 13, 2002, damages model. He admitted that he had never used the methods used to create the September 13, 2002, damages model; he even confessed that "I am not a [damages] modeler." IX Aplt. App. at 3994; see also XI Aplt. App. at 4850 ("I'm not an accountant and I'm not an academic"); id. at 4851 ("I'm not an expert on regression analysis."); id. at 4852 ("I am not a statistician and I'm not an expert about regression analysis."). Indeed, [The Plaintiffs' Expert] took a single undergraduate class in economics. But he took no accounting or finance courses, had no training in damage analysis, had never testified as a damages expert or prepared an expert damages report, had never taught a course or lectured on damages, and has never been published in the field. Id. at 4855-56. As the district court noted, Mr. Livingston is "not a trained economist and cannot legitimately educate a jury on many of the complex economic aspects of [the damages model] such as 'S-curves.'"

The published opinion further stated:

(1) the expert exhibited an "utter lack of any familiarity, knowledge, or experience with damages analysis";
(2) his methods were "misleading, not reliable, and unsupported by use in any other comparable setting" and did not fit the facts of the case; and
(3) the testimony would have confused the jury rather than assisting it. See Lifewise Master Funding v. Telebank, No. 03-4086 (10th Cir. June 29, 2004) (Ebel, Kelly, & McConnell, JJ.).

(Thanks Blog 702)