Didonato v. GS Services Limited Partnership
- Lorna Schofield
- 1:20-cv-02154-LGS
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Didonato v. GC Services, Judge Schofield denied the motion to strike calculations supporting Didonato’s class-certification request.
Francis Didonato and GC Services Limited Partnership. The motion to strike DeBois’s declaration was denied, and GC Services was permitted to depose DeBois if needed to understand his calculations.
What happened
In Didonato v. GC Services Limited Partnership, GC Services asked the court to strike John DeBois’s declaration supporting Francis Didonato’s motion for class certification. GC Services argued that Didonato had not disclosed DeBois as an expert witness and had not shown that his opinions met the requirements for expert testimony.
Didonato responded that DeBois was not an expert and had only performed simple computer calculations comparing loan information with federal education data. The court agreed that expert-witness disclosure and admissibility requirements did not apply to those calculations.
Judge Lorna G. Schofield construed GC Services’ letter as a motion to strike and denied it. The court also allowed GC Services to depose DeBois, if needed, to understand how he performed the calculations.
The detailed version
- Didonato v. GS Services Limited Partnership · No. 1:20-cv-02154-LGS
- Lorna Schofield
- Feb. 10, 2021
Background
GC Services Limited Partnership filed a pre-motion letter anticipating a motion to strike the declaration of John DeBois, which Francis Didonato submitted in support of his motion for class certification. GC Services argued that Didonato had not disclosed DeBois as a potential expert witness and had not provided materials addressing the requirements for admitting expert testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702.
GC Services asserted that DeBois offered opinions about the number of educational loans that exceeded the cost of attendance and the number of loans made for attendance at eligible educational institutions. Didonato responded that DeBois was not an expert witness. According to Didonato, DeBois had performed a simple computer calculation comparing loan amounts disclosed by Navient and serviced by the defendants with data in the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System database. DeBois also counted borrowers who, according to Navient’s spreadsheet, had not attended Title IV institutions.
Court’s Analysis
The court stated that expert testimony is not required for simple arithmetic calculations and cited a decision recognizing that parties may use Excel to assist with such calculations. Because DeBois performed simple computer calculations rather than acting as an expert witness, the court held that the expert-witness disclosure requirements in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 and the expert-testimony admissibility requirements in Federal Rule of Evidence 702 did not apply to his testimony.
Ruling
The court construed GC Services’ February 4, 2021, pre-motion letter as a motion to strike and denied the motion. The court further ordered that GC Services could depose DeBois on the earliest possible date if needed to understand how he conducted the calculations. GC Services was required to file a letter by February 12, 2021, stating whether it intended to take the deposition and, if so, proposing a date. This order did not decide Didonato’s underlying motion for class certification.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.