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Mealey's Daubert

  • February 24, 2026

    Experts Featured In Mealey’s Daubert Report

    Entries are in alphabetical order of the expert in each area of expert testimony.  Experts appeared in the January and February 2026 issue of Mealey’s Daubert Report.

  • February 24, 2026

    Judge Nixes Asbestos Experts After Briefing On New Rules, Supreme Court Precedent

    SEATTLE — A federal in Washington judge excluded a pair of asbestos experts and granted summary judgment to two shipyard defendants after the parties briefed her on the impact of the amended Federal Rules of Evidence and a recent U.S. Supreme Court case governing federal jurisdiction.

  • February 24, 2026

    South Dakota High Court Finds Error In Excluding Expert In Malpractice Case

    PIERRE, S.D. — The South Dakota Supreme Court found that a trial court failed to properly consider an expert’s opinions on differential diagnosis under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc. and reversed summary judgment granted to a medical center and its doctor in a medical malpractice case.

  • February 24, 2026

    Federal Judge Allows Expert Medical Testimony In Standard Of Care Dispute

    SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A physician’s testimony that a man’s treating medical providers’ decisions during his stay at a hospital, including ordering his transfer to another health facility, violated the standard of care is reliable and will assist the jury, a federal judge in Puerto Rico ruled in denying a motion to exclude.

  • February 24, 2026

    California Appeals Court Rejects Avon’s Challenges To Asbestos Expert Testimony

    LOS ANGELES — A California appellate court affirmed a judgment following a verdict of more than $40.8 million in total compensatory damages and another $10.3 million in punitive damages, saying that it discerned nothing improper in expert testimony about testing that found asbestos in talc or that resulting exposure constituted a cause of a woman’s mesothelioma.

  • February 23, 2026

    Judge Limits Testimony From Plaintiffs’ Experts In Bard Port Catheter MDL

    PHOENIX — The Arizona federal judge overseeing the multidistrict litigation involving C.R. Bard Inc.’s implanted port catheter (IPC) device on Feb. 20 ruled that certain opinions offered by experts retained by the plaintiffs are inadmissible.

  • February 23, 2026

    Fla. Federal Judge: Police Expert Can Testify On Drug Trafficking Practices

    TAMPA, Fla. — A police detective can testify as an expert on drug trafficking and how drug traffickers and dealers act in an upcoming criminal trial in a Florida federal court, a judge ruled Feb. 20, denying a motion to exclude filed by one of the defendants.

  • February 20, 2026

    Causation Experts Can Testify In Bair Hugger Case, Ohio Federal Judge Says

    DAYTON, Ohio — An Ohio federal judge denied a series of motions to exclude experts in a Bair Hugger patient warming device case that had been remanded from a multidistrict litigation and denied a motion for summary judgment after finding that there are genuine material facts in dispute.

  • February 20, 2026

    N.Y. Federal Judge Limits Stairwell Expert From Opining On What Caused Injuries

    NEW YORK — A New York federal judge found that some proposed testimony by an architectural expert retained in an injury case goes beyond his area of expertise and granted a motion to exclude filed by the landlord of the property at issue.

  • February 20, 2026

    Federal Circuit: Judge Rightly Excluded Expert From Input Patent Row

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A plaintiff-appellant and its expert witness failed to grapple with some of the key claim limitations in their infringement analysis, a Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel held Feb. 19, affirming a Delaware federal judge’s grant of summary judgment of noninfringement on claims challenging some of the PlayStation line of video game consoles.

  • February 19, 2026

    Ga. Supreme Court: Expert Testimony Properly Admitted, Murder Conviction Affirmed

    ATLANTA — The Georgia Supreme Court upheld a murder conviction, rejecting arguments that the trial court erred in allowing an expert to testify about testing that was done to prove that the fatal gunshot was not self-inflicted.

  • February 19, 2026

    Judge Allows Experts, Certifies Class On Whether UM/UIM Coverage Properly Applied

    PHOENIX — An Arizona federal judge agreed to certify a class action alleging that an insurer underpaid insureds by failing to stack uninsured motorist (UM) or underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage for policyholders who had multivehicle policies and rejected efforts by the insurer to exclude expert testimony on class certification.

  • February 18, 2026

    Federal Circuit Emphasizes Court’s Gatekeeping Role In Affirming Patent Verdict

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Feb. 17 affirmed a Minnesota federal judge’s denial of defendant-appellants’ requests for judgment as a matter of law (JMOL) or for a new trial on damages; the panel emphasized that its role on appeal was to determine whether the jury had substantial evidence to support its findings, not to reweigh that evidence.

  • February 18, 2026

    Amicus Urges High Court Review Of Expert Admissibility Standards In Injury Dispute

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Washington Legal Foundation (WLF) on Feb. 17 filed an amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that it should grant the petition for a writ of certiorari filed by Union Carbide Corp. and an affiliate in a dispute over the correct legal standard for the admissibility of an expert in an ethylene oxide (EtO) injury case because it “raises a profound question about the integrity of our federal justice system—whether trial judges must faithfully enforce Federal Rule of Evidence 702 as a bulwark against unreliable expert testimony, or whether they must sidestep that duty and pass the buck to juries.”

  • February 13, 2026

    Ethylene Oxide Defendants Seek High Court Review Of Expert Admissibility Standards

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — Union Carbide Corp. and an affiliate have filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that a lower court applied the incorrect legal standard for the admissibility of an expert under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 in a lawsuit over alleged injuries caused by exposure to ethylene oxide.  The petitioners say that the Supreme Court should hear the case because federal appellate courts are divided over whether challenges to the factual basis of an expert’s opinion “always go to weight, not admissibility.”

  • February 09, 2026

    Experts Opining On Data To Consider Class Certification Partially Admitted

    CHICAGO — A federal judge in Illinois partially granted and partially denied dueling motions to exclude experts from testifying in a putative class action related to allegedly defective transmissions on Ford Motor Co. trucks.

  • February 09, 2026

    Construction Expert Can Testify In Breach Of Contract Dispute In Virgin Islands

    ST. THOMAS, Virgin Islands — An expert retained by a construction company can testify in a breach of contract case because his opinions meet the reliability test under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and questions on how he reached those conclusions are “grist for cross-examination, not exclusion,” a federal magistrate judge in the Virgin Islands said.

  • February 06, 2026

    Judge Certifies Classes In Juul Antitrust Suit, Denies Opposing Daubert Motions

    SAN FRANCISCO — A California federal judge on Feb. 5 entered a short form order announcing his rulings certifying several classes of purchasers bringing antitrust claims against Juul Labs Inc. (JLI) and Altria Group Inc. for allegedly seeking to monopolize the e-cigarette market and increasing prices after Altria in 2018 invested in JLI and denied the opposing parties’ Daubert motions to exclude each other’s experts.

  • February 03, 2026

    Use-Of-Force Expert Can Testify On Whether Deputies Acted Within Standards

    TACOMA, Wash. — A Washington federal magistrate judge on Feb. 2 denied a motion to bar a police practices and use-of-force expert from opining that the actions of two police deputies were within generally accepted police standards.

  • February 02, 2026

    9th Circuit: Judge Properly Found Securities Claims Against Crypto Firm Barred

    SAN FRANCISCO — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel affirmed a lower court’s order granting a motion from an issuer of crypto tokens and its CEO to dismiss class action securities claims against them, finding that the 2017 offering of the tokens was a separate offering from the 2013 offering, making the federal securities claims time-barred.

  • January 30, 2026

    Wash. Federal Judge Says Safety Expert Can Testify In Slip-And-Fall Case

    SEATTLE — An expert retained by a woman who says she was injured after slipping in a bank’s parking lot can testify, but his testimony will be limited to topics he previously disclosed in his expert report, a Washington federal judge held Jan. 29.

  • January 27, 2026

    Experts Featured In Mealey’s Daubert Report

    Entries are in alphabetical order of the expert in each area of expert testimony.  Experts appeared in the January 2026 issue of Mealey’s Daubert Report.

  • January 27, 2026

    J&J Asks High Court To Decide If Experts Must Meet Daubert For Class Certification

    WASHINGTON, D.C. — A woman asked the U.S. Supreme Court for an extension to respond to a petition for writ of certiorari filed by Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. (J&J), which asks the court to rule on whether expert testimony on damages during the class certification stage must comply with Federal Rule of Evidence 702, Fed. R. Evid. 702, and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc.

  • January 27, 2026

    Judge: Genetic Experts May Opine Only On General Causation In Asbestos Case

    NEW ORLEANS — A Louisiana judge partially granted a man’s motion in limine challenging two experts, saying they may offer general causation opinions on the role genetics played in mesothelioma but not opinions about the specific cause of the man’s disease.

  • January 27, 2026

    Texas Appeals Court Reverses Med-Mal Defense Verdict, Says Expert Wrongly Excluded

    EL PASO, Texas — A Texas appeals court remanded a medical malpractice case for a new trial after finding that a woman’s expert on the standard of care was wrongly excluded from testifying.