Ashmore v. CGI Inc

Background

Defendants sought permission to file a motion under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc. to exclude the testimony of Plaintiff Benjamin Ashmore’s damages expert, Dr. David L. Crawford. Ashmore opposed the request. The court’s individual practices generally required motions to exclude expert testimony to be filed by the dispositive-motion deadline.

Defendants represented that Crawford’s report had been revised significantly since that deadline and that the revised report relied on facts and calculation methods not included in the earlier report. The court explained that reliability review requires examining the facts supporting an expert’s opinion, the method used to reach the opinion, and how the expert applied those facts and methods to the case.

Ruling

The court granted defendants’ request for permission to file the motion. Because Crawford’s original report had been served in March 2014 and defendants had not sought to exclude his testimony then, the court limited defendants’ arguments to issues raised for the first time by Crawford’s 2019 report.

The court ordered defendants to file the exclusion motion and a supporting memorandum of no more than 10 pages by January 31, 2020. Ashmore’s opposition, also limited to 10 pages, was due February 14, 2020. The order granted permission to file the motion; it did not rule on whether Crawford’s testimony would ultimately be excluded.