Caldwell v. City of San Francisco
- Donna Ryu
- 4:12-cv-01892
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 16
In Caldwell v. City of San Francisco, Judge Ryu granted defendants’ motion to exclude most of Caldwell’s damages expert’s testimony, subject to a limited condition.
Maurice Caldwell, the defendants, the proposed expert witnesses, and the jury in the underlying case were affected. Cunniff’s damages testimony was largely excluded; related rebuttal and reply testimony was also excluded; and the parties had to address the therapeutic-services opinion through an agreed statement.
What happened
In Caldwell v. City of San Francisco, defendants asked the court to exclude testimony from Martin Cunniff, whom Caldwell hired to calculate economic losses from his wrongful conviction and imprisonment.
The court found that Cunniff lacked a sufficient foundation to testify about Caldwell’s earning capacity and that several of his methods relied on unsupported assumptions. It excluded nearly all of his testimony, except his opinion about the present-value cost of therapeutic services, which the parties were ordered to address through an agreed statement for the jury. The court also denied as moot related motions concerning rebuttal testimony.
Judge Donna M. Ryu granted defendants’ motion in limine, contingent on the parties agreeing on language about the therapeutic-services evidence, and denied the related motions as moot.
The detailed version
- Caldwell v. City of San Francisco · No. 4:12-cv-01892
- Donna Ryu
- Apr. 13, 2021
Background
Maurice Caldwell retained Martin Cunniff to calculate damages that Caldwell allegedly suffered because of his wrongful conviction and imprisonment. Cunniff offered opinions concerning lost earning capacity, impaired Social Security retirement benefits, lost investment income, the cost of psychotherapeutic services, and hedonic damages, meaning damages for loss of the pleasure of being alive.
Cunniff assumed that Caldwell had a reasonable probability of pursuing careers as a carpenter, insurance salesperson, or construction manager. Caldwell’s pre-incarceration work history included warehouse, forklift, carpentry, salon, janitorial, painting, and other short-term work. The court required Caldwell to submit an offer of proof identifying the admissible facts supporting Cunniff’s assumptions. After striking argumentative portions, the court accepted the portions containing factual information.
Legal standard
Federal Rule of Evidence 702 governs expert testimony. It permits qualified experts to testify when their specialized knowledge will help the jury, the testimony rests on sufficient facts or data, reliable methods, and reliable application of those methods. Under this standard, the court acts as a gatekeeper by screening out unreliable expert testimony. The party offering the testimony must show that it is admissible by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning that admissibility is more likely than not.
Reasons for excluding Cunniff’s testimony
The court concluded that Caldwell had not shown that Cunniff was qualified to offer opinions about loss of earning capacity in a wrongful-imprisonment case. Cunniff was an attorney with extensive experience handling damages in commercial litigation, but he had never served as an expert witness, had never completed a transferable-skills analysis or analyzed labor-market access, and had only assessed vocational aptitude in a law-firm setting. He also had not consulted vocational rehabilitation counselors or economists.
The court found that Cunniff’s earning-capacity opinions depended on unsupported vocational assumptions. He relied on a brief interview with Caldwell, information from Caldwell’s attorneys, unspecified information from another person, and non-scholarly websites. He did not consult records such as standardized test scores, employment records, or educational history, and did not explain how he applied specialized expertise to the information he used. The court therefore excluded his testimony about Caldwell’s ability to pursue the three identified professions and his resulting past and future economic damages, including the related opinion about impaired Social Security retirement benefits.
The court also excluded Cunniff’s opinion that Caldwell would have invested $500 per month in a retirement account. The report did not support the assumptions that Caldwell would have had such an account or would have been able to make those investments beginning in 1991.
Cunniff calculated hedonic damages by using a $100-per-day rate based on prices for jail facilities offering people who could afford it a safer or cleaner incarceration setting. The court held that this “willingness-to-pay” method was not based on reliable principles and methods because prices for such facilities reflect many factors unrelated to the value of an individual’s enjoyment of life. The court excluded this opinion as well.
Disposition
The court granted Defendants’ Motion in Limine No. 18, contingent on the parties reaching agreement on language to be read to the jury about the parties’ positions concerning the present-value cost of therapeutic services. The court found that Cunniff’s opinion on that single issue appeared to fall within his expertise and rested on a sufficient factual basis and methodology, but directed the parties to meet and confer and file a joint statement by April 22, 2021 rather than have Cunniff testify on that matter.
Because most of Cunniff’s testimony was excluded, the court stated that the related rebuttal and reply opinions were also excluded and denied the corresponding motions as moot. Judge Donna M. Ryu signed the order as a United States Magistrate Judge.
Read the full 16-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.