Faison v. East Bay Regional Parks District

Background

Faison sued the East Bay Regional Parks District and EBRPD Officer Jonathan Knea, alleging violations of his civil rights under federal and state law. The parties filed competing motions under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, which governs when expert testimony is admissible. The court held that expert testimony must be relevant and reliable, and that experts may help the jury understand specialized subjects but may not decide factual disputes, make credibility determinations, or state legal conclusions for the jury.

Faison moved to exclude testimony from five defense experts: Robert Fonzi, Dr. Binh Ly, Dr. Gary Vilke, Dr. Durand Begault, and Brian Chiles. The defendants moved to exclude portions of Faison’s expert Travis Norton’s testimony.

Travis Norton

The court found Norton qualified to testify about police practices and Tasers. His experience included reviewing hundreds of use-of-force incidents, serving as a subject-matter expert for Axon regarding the Taser 10, and conducting internal studies involving Tasers.

The court excluded Norton’s opinions that a reasonable officer would not have believed a firearm was involved and would not have used a Taser against Faison while he was fleeing. Norton could discuss police standards, Taser use, and hypothetical situations, but he could not apply those standards to the specific incident or testify about whether Officer Knea could reasonably have believed Faison had a concealed weapon. Norton also had to limit his testimony to the opinions in his expert report.

Robert Fonzi

The court granted Faison’s motion to exclude Fonzi as an expert. Fonzi’s first two opinions concerned reasonable suspicion and probable cause, issues the defendants agreed were not for the jury at trial, so the court excluded them as irrelevant. His third and fourth opinions improperly stated legal conclusions or applied legal standards to the incident. His fifth opinion concerned an issue the defendants said was no longer in the case. His sixth opinion lacked a sufficient explanation of the materials reviewed, the professional standards used, and the reasons for his conclusions. Because none of Fonzi’s testimony was admissible based on his Rule 26 report, the court excluded all of his testimony.

Dr. Gary Vilke

The court allowed Vilke to identify Taser probe marks. It found he had sufficient experience with Taser probes and that visual inspection was not shown to be an unreliable method for a medical expert.

Vilke could not testify about theories involving how Taser probes made an electrical connection, because the parties agreed that electrical data was outside his expertise. He could explain symptoms associated with neuromuscular incapacitation, but he could not testify that Faison did not experience it because he had not provided an adequate foundation for that conclusion.

The court rejected Faison’s argument that Vilke’s opinion about the cause of Faison’s cardiac arrest was improperly cumulative of Ly’s opinion. Vilke focused on the Taser’s effects, while Ly focused on toxicology, so their opinions were sufficiently different. Faison could object at trial if the testimony became unnecessarily repetitive.

Dr. Binh Ly

Ly could testify about the psychological and physiological effects commonly associated with methamphetamine use. He could not testify that Faison’s behavior was consistent with those effects, because that conclusion would require the jury to decide what the behavior showed. The court excluded Ly’s Opinions 1, 7, 10, and 11 in their entirety; the last sentence of Opinion 5; and all of Opinion 9 except the sentence stating that glass pipes are commonly used to smoke illicit drugs, including methamphetamine. The parties could use hypothetical questions to elicit permissible expert testimony.

Dr. Durand Begault

Begault was a forensic video and audio expert. The court granted Faison’s motion to exclude portions of Begault’s testimony concerning the description of Faison as “swimming.” Begault could authenticate the video and explain changes made to the raw footage, but he did not need to comment on the contents of the videos he produced.

Brian Chiles

The court treated Chiles as a retained expert because he developed his opinions after the incident using data provided by the defendants. Although his report did not include all information required for a retained expert report, the court found the omission harmless because the report had been provided long before expert discovery, Faison deposed Chiles, and Faison did not seek the missing curriculum vitae or list of prior cases. The court declined to exclude Chiles’s testimony entirely.

The defendants were ordered to provide Faison with Chiles’s curriculum vitae, publication list, and list of past cases by September 23, 2026. Chiles could testify about what the raw Taser data showed, such as connection time or electrical current, but he could not testify about what conditions caused the data readings because the defendants had not established his expertise in water conductivity. He could testify about the length of electrical conduction indicated by the Taser data. Any disputes about inconsistencies in that opinion went to credibility and cross-examination rather than the reliability of his methods.

Disposition

The court granted in part and denied in part Faison’s motion to exclude expert testimony and granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to exclude expert testimony. The order disposed of Docket Nos. 119 and 142.