Hamrit v. Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Background

Houssam Eddine Hamrit, who was representing himself, sought to present Larry F. Stewart as an expert witness in a bench trial concerning whether Hamrit entered an arbitration agreement with Citigroup when he opened an online brokerage account. Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., Citi Personal Wealth Management, and Citigroup, Inc. moved to exclude Stewart’s anticipated testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. The court had previously ordered a trial on the limited issue of whether the parties agreed to arbitrate.

Stewart offered two main opinions. First, he concluded that Citigroup’s security standards did not align with National Institute of Standards and Technology standards for high-value transactions. Second, he concluded that discrepancies in the account-opening documents showed that Citigroup’s system did not truly verify Hamrit’s identity and that the documents were not reliable conclusive proof of Hamrit’s electronic signature.

Rule 702 analysis

Rule 702 allows expert testimony when the proposed expert is qualified and the testimony is more likely than not to help the court or jury understand evidence or decide a disputed fact. The testimony must also be based on sufficient facts or data and reliable methods reliably applied to the case. The court acts as the gatekeeper for this evidence.

The court assumed without deciding that Stewart had sufficient expertise in the general area of document security. Stewart testified about his education, training, and experience as a forensic scientist specializing in chemistry and document security, including prior work with the United States Secret Service. But the court ruled that he was not qualified to offer opinions based on, or about, Citigroup’s ThreatMetrix report. Stewart had no training or prior experience with that product, and the court had already ruled during trial that he could not testify about it.

Relevance and reliability

The court ruled that most of Stewart’s proposed testimony was not helpful under Rule 702. His analysis primarily compared the Account Application and Client Agreement with other documents and identified differences in addresses, immigration status, names, fonts, image quality, and signatures. The court found that it could make those observations without expert assistance. It also found that the conclusion that discrepancies raised questions about authenticity was a conclusion a non-expert could reach.

The court separately found that Stewart’s testimony was unreliable because it rested on insufficient facts and incorrect assumptions. In particular, Stewart’s conclusion about Citigroup’s security standards assumed that no biometric authentication was used. The court found that Hamrit testified he had facial identification enabled before the account was opened, and that Citigroup’s evidence showed a facial-identification login began the account-opening session on May 3, 2020.

The court also found that Stewart’s concerns about the appearance of the Client Agreement relied on incomplete information. A Citigroup employee testified without contradiction that the agreement’s appearance resulted from Citigroup converting the customer’s typed name into an image used as the customer’s electronic signature. The court concluded that Stewart’s failure to account for complete and accurate information substantially reduced the usefulness of his opinions.

Disposition

The court concluded that Stewart’s opinions about Citigroup’s security standards and identity verification did not satisfy Rule 702’s helpfulness and sufficient-facts requirements. It therefore granted Citigroup’s motion, excluded Stewart’s proposed expert testimony, and struck Hamrit’s Exhibits 8, 9, 22, and 23 from the trial record. The order did not resolve whether Hamrit entered into the arbitration agreement. The court also stated that post-trial briefing remained due on January 31, 2025, with optional response briefs due on February 21, 2025, and directed the Clerk to close Docket Number 83.