Smith v. City Of Oakland
- Jon Tigar
- 4:19-cv-05398
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 4
In Smith v. City of Oakland, Judge Tigar denied reconsideration, leaving excluded the City’s expert testimony about rent control’s effect on property values.
The City of Oakland’s expert testimony from Bryant Sparkman remains excluded; the plaintiffs opposed the City’s motion, and the court denied it.
What happened
In Smith v. City of Oakland, the City asked the court to reconsider an earlier order excluding testimony from its expert, Bryant Sparkman. The earlier order found that Sparkman was not qualified to perform the economic analysis for which he was hired and that his method was unreliable.
The City argued that experts may testify about industry experience and that Sparkman’s testimony should receive a less demanding review. The court disagreed because Sparkman sought to conduct an economic analysis even though he was not an economist. The court also found that his analysis examined only rent control and did not account for other factors that could affect property values.
Judge Tigar denied the motion for reconsideration. The court therefore left in place its earlier exclusion of Sparkman’s testimony, while declining to reconsider separately whether he had sufficiently explained or disclosed his methodology.
The detailed version
- Smith v. City Of Oakland · No. 4:19-cv-05398
- Jon Tigar
- June 20, 2025
Background
The City of Oakland moved for reconsideration of the court’s February 13, 2025 interlocutory order excluding testimony from the City’s expert, Bryant Sparkman. An interlocutory order is a ruling made before final judgment. The earlier order concluded that Sparkman was not qualified to perform the economic analysis for which he was retained and that his methodology was unreliable because it did not account for other potential causes of differences in sales prices among buildings and did not use regression analysis.
Reconsideration standard
The court explained that it may reconsider an interlocutory order before entering final judgment. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) and the District’s Local Rule 7-9, reconsideration generally requires reasonable diligence and newly discovered evidence, clear error, an intervening change in controlling law, or a manifest failure to consider material facts or dispositive legal arguments previously presented.
The City’s arguments
The City argued that experts regularly testify about industry norms and the effects of conditions on industries in which they have experience. The court found that this did not describe Sparkman’s proposed testimony. Sparkman sought to present an “economic analysis” of the effect of extending rent control to rental units not then covered by Oakland’s Rent Adjustment Program. The court stated that none of the City’s cited authorities supported allowing an expert who was not an economist to conduct and present an economic analysis.
The City also argued that Sparkman’s testimony should be evaluated as non-scientific expert testimony. The court rejected that argument because Sparkman relied on a particular economic methodology rather than only on industry experience. The court concluded that the methodology was unreliable: Sparkman examined only the presence or absence of rent control and attributed differences in property values to that single variable. He acknowledged that he had not controlled for other factors affecting price.
The City separately challenged the court’s conclusion that Sparkman had not made his models available, leaving his methodology an untested and untestable “black box.” Because the reliability problems independently justified excluding his testimony, the court did not reconsider that separate conclusion.
Disposition
Judge Tigar denied the City’s motion for reconsideration. The opinion therefore left in place the earlier order excluding Sparkman’s testimony.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.