Federal District Court grants series of Daubert motions in trucking accident case, severely impairing plaintiffs’ damages case.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys often create pyramids of expert testimony wherein each expert essentially “piggybacks” off other experts, although no expert actually establishes a true foundation for their opinions, while also relying on treating physicians to offer “expert” opinions as to causation and future prognosis. Courts are often reluctant to enforce stringent expert requirements designed to require experts to provide a verifiable basis for their opinions. However, in this matter, the court meticulously parsed the methodology used by the experts and struck or limited the testimony of five of the plaintiff’s experts, citing: (1) failure to review all relevant medical records and medical history; (2) offering opinions outside their stated expertise (for example, a life care planner opining as to causation); and (3) most often noting that the experts lacked a sufficient basis for understanding the physical dynamics (speed, forces, etc.) of the motor vehicle accident. It is often imperative to have engineering experts establish the forces present in an action to provide a foundation, and the court precluded much of the plaintiff’s planned expert testimony due to this failure.

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