Title: Vasquez v. Mabini
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: 040913
State: Virginia
Issuer: Virginia Supreme Court
Date: January 14, 2005

Present:  Lacy, Keenan, Koontz, Kinser, Lemons and Agee, JJ., 
and Russell, S.J. 
 
ROGELIO VASQUEZ, et al. 
             OPINION BY 
SENIOR JUSTICE CHARLES S. RUSSELL 
v.   Record No. 040913   
 
January 14, 2005 
 
APOLINARIO MABINI, as Joint Heir and 
Administrator of the Estate 
of Tamara Jane Mabini 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF FAIRFAX COUNTY 
Dennis J. Smith, Judge 
 
 
This appeal presents questions whether expert testimony 
was erroneously admitted in the trial of a wrongful death case 
and whether objections to the testimony were waived. 
Facts and Proceedings 
 
The facts will be summarized in the light most favorable 
to the plaintiff, the prevailing party at trial.  On 
January 29, 2002, at about 12:45 p.m., while Tamara Mabini was 
standing at the intersection of Routes 6363 and 602 in Reston, 
she was struck from behind and killed by a Fairfax County 
Connector bus.  The bus was driven by Rogelio Vasquez, an 
employee of First Transit, Inc., which operated the bus 
service under a contract with Fairfax County. 
 
At the time of her death, Mrs. Mabini was 53 years old.  
She had been employed as a part-time clerical worker earning 
$8.00 per hour for the preceding three months but was seeking 
full-time clerical employment.  She was living with her 
husband, Apolinario Mabini, and her adult son by a former 
 
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marriage, Matt Pomeroy, who was in his late twenties.  Pomeroy 
was bipolar and had emotional and psychological problems. He 
had worked only sporadically and was dependent upon Mrs. 
Mabini for most of his care.  Pomeroy died on June 2, 2002, 
less than six months after his mother’s death.  In addition to 
her part-time employment, Mrs. Mabini had devoted some 36 
hours per week to caring for her household. 
 
Three months before the accident, the Mabinis had moved 
to Virginia from Texas.  Mrs. Mabini had worked there for over 
a year as a clerical worker and earlier had worked as a 
hairdresser for 27 years.  A primary motivation for the 
family’s move to Virginia had been Mrs. Mabini’s desire to be 
near her married daughter and three-year-old grandchild, who 
lived in Falls Church.  She had an “extremely close” 
relationship with them and gave them considerable household 
assistance. 
 
Apolinario Mabini brought this action for wrongful death 
as administrator and representative of the beneficiaries of 
Mrs. Mabini’s estate, against Vasquez and First Transit, Inc. 
A three-day jury trial ended January 15, 2004, with a verdict 
of $1,999,872.00 for the plaintiff, upon which the trial court 
entered final judgment.  We granted the defendants an appeal 
limited to a single assignment of error: that the trial court 
abused its discretion in permitting plaintiff’s expert witness 
 
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to present opinion testimony that was “speculative, 
counterfactual, and unsupported by the evidence in the case.” 
 
At trial, the plaintiff presented the testimony of 
Richard B. Edelman, a Professor Emeritus of Finance at The 
American University, as an expert witness with regard to the 
decedent’s expected loss of income and the economic value of 
the loss of her services, protection, care and assistance.  No 
objection was made to his qualifications.  He testified that 
Mrs. Mabini’s lost income and benefits would have amounted to 
$121,533 if she had worked until age 60 and $203,145 if she 
had worked until age 66.  He gave the value of her lost 
household services as $343,287 and reasonable funeral expenses 
as $12,403.  His calculation of the total economic loss to the 
beneficiaries was thus $477,223 based on retirement at 60 and 
$558,835 based on retirement at 66.  These conclusions were 
necessarily dependent upon certain assumptions to which the 
defendants objected: that the decedent would have found full-
time employment the day after the accident at a wage of $8.00 
per hour ($16,000 per year) and would have remained so 
employed until retirement; that her employer would have 
provided additional contributions amounting to 3.7% of her 
income in the form of a “401(k)” or similar retirement 
benefit; that her income would increase by 4.25% per year, and 
that Pomeroy, her dependent adult son, would have continued to 
 
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live 24 years into the future even though the witness knew 
that he had died before trial.  The defendants also objected 
to the witness’ failure to consider the life expectancy of the 
decedent’s husband in arriving at the economic value of her 
lost household services. 
Discussion 
A. 
Expert Testimony 
 
Code § 8.01-401.1 provides that an expert witness in a 
civil case may testify and render an opinion “from facts, 
circumstances or data made known to or perceived by such 
witness at or before the hearing or trial,” and that such data 
need not be such as to be admissible in evidence “if of a type 
normally relied upon by others in the particular field of 
expertise. . . .”  We have never, however, construed that 
section to permit the admission of expert testimony that lacks 
evidentiary support.  Lawson v. Doe, 239 Va. 477, 483, 391 
S.E.2d 333, 336 (1990).  Estimates of damages based entirely 
on statistics and assumptions are too remote and speculative 
to permit “an intelligent and probable estimate of damages.” 
Bulala v. Boyd, 239 Va. 218, 233, 389 S.E.2d 670, 677 (1990). 
 
In order to form a reliable basis for a calculation 
of lost future income or loss of earning capacity, such 
evidence must be grounded upon facts specific to the 
individual whose loss is being calculated.  
 
Id. (emphasis added). 
 
 
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Expert testimony founded upon assumptions that have no 
basis in fact is not merely subject to refutation by cross-
examination or by counter-experts; it is inadmissible. 
Virginia Financial Assoc. v. ITT Hartford Group, 266 Va. 177, 
183, 585 S.E.2d 789, 792 (2003).  Failure of the trial court 
to strike such testimony upon a motion timely made is error 
subject to reversal on appeal.  Countryside Corporation v. 
Taylor, 263 Va. 549, 553, 561 S.E.2d 680, 682 (2002); Gilbert 
v. Summers, 240 Va. 155, 159-61, 393 S.E.2d 213, 215-16 
(1990).  Furthermore, expert testimony is inadmissible if the 
expert fails to consider all the variables that bear upon the 
inferences to be deduced from the facts observed.  
Countryside, 263 Va. at 553, 561 S.E.2d at 682. 
 
Here, the Edelman testimony was inadmissible for all the 
foregoing reasons. The economic value of the decedent’s lost 
income was projected from a base of $16,000 per year, 
beginning the day after the accident and continuing until 
retirement, based upon an assumption of full-time clerical 
work with added annual increases and fringe benefits.  On 
cross-examination, however, the expert admitted that Mrs. 
Mabini had little experience as a clerical worker, had earned 
less than $1000 the previous year and that her annual earnings 
for the preceding several years had never exceeded $7000.  She 
had been seeking full-time clerical employment since moving to 
 
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Virginia, but had been unable to find anything but part-time 
work.  The record does not show that she had ever held full-
time employment or received any fringe benefits.  She was not 
seeking employment as a hairdresser, despite her experience in 
that occupation, but the expert’s opinion was that her 
potential earnings would be approximately the same in either 
field.  On similar facts, we have previously held that such 
projections lack the required grounding in the applicable 
facts, and hence are inadmissible.  See Greater Richmond 
Transit Co. v. Wilkerson, 242 Va. 65, 71-72, 406 S.E.2d 28, 33 
(1991). 
 
The expert’s assumption that the decedent would have 
received a 3.7% retirement benefit in addition to her salary 
was premised on his further assumption that she would have 
found full-time clerical employment the day after the 
accident.  He testified: “most full-time employees get that.”  
His conclusion, however, was based only upon a statistic 
applied to facts entirely unrelated to the personal 
circumstances of the decedent.  Similarly, his assumption that 
her income would have increased 4.25% each year until 
retirement was based upon a statistical projection of wage 
rate increases applied to the unfounded assumption of full-
time employment. 
 
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In calculating the value of Mrs. Mabini’s lost services, 
protection, care and assistance, the expert made the 
assumption that her son, Pomeroy, would have lived throughout 
his mother’s remaining life expectancy, an additional 24 
years, and that he would continue as an adult dependent 
throughout that time.  In fact, the expert was aware that 
Pomeroy had died before trial, less than six months after his 
mother’s death.  In this respect, the present case is similar 
to Countryside, where an expert “assumed a fiction and based 
his opinion of damages upon that fiction.”  We held that 
testimony to be “speculative and unreliable as a matter of 
law.”  Countryside, 263 Va. at 553, 561 S.E.2d at 682. 
B. 
Waiver 
 
The plaintiff contends that the defendants waived any 
objection they might have had to the Edelman testimony by 
failing to make a contemporaneous objection in the trial 
court.  Seven months before trial, the court entered a 
scheduling order requiring the parties to identify expert 
witnesses at least 90 days before trial.  Pursuant to that 
order and an interrogatory request, the plaintiff designated 
Edelman as his expert and filed a summary of the nature of his 
expected testimony.  The scheduling order provided that “all 
information discoverable under Rule 4:1(b)4(A)[i] . . . shall 
be provided” and that objections to witnesses were to be filed 
 
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five days before trial or would be considered waived.  The 
cited rule requires disclosure of “the substance of the facts 
and opinions to which the expert is expected to testify and a 
summary of the grounds for each opinion.”  The defendants 
filed no pretrial objection to Edelman’s proposed testimony 
and the plaintiff points to that failure as a waiver.  An 
examination of the summary filed by the plaintiff, however, 
would have given the defendants no reason to object to the 
proposed testimony.  It contained no figures, recited no work 
history and revealed none of the assumptions upon which the 
witness intended to rely, particularly those of full-time 
employment and ongoing care for Pomeroy despite his death.  It 
failed to put the defendants on notice of any of the fallacies 
in the opinion that would become apparent at trial, and their 
failure to make a pretrial objection did not, therefore, 
constitute a waiver. 
 
At trial, after the opening statements of counsel and in 
the absence of the jury, defense counsel advised the court 
that he believed that some of the plaintiff’s expert testimony 
might be inadmissible in that “many of the assumptions and 
facts that form the basis of his opinion aren’t in accordance 
with the evidence of the case” and that “there will be 
objection to various of his opinions . . . as assumptions with 
no evidentiary support.”  The trial court responded: “I’ll 
 
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have to deal with those on an individual bas[i]s. . . . 
“[W]e’ll deal with it as he testifies.”  The trial court 
informed counsel that such objections could be heard at a 
bench conference or in the absence of the jury. 
 
The plaintiff’s direct examination of Edelman did not 
reveal his reliance upon the unsupported assumptions that 
underlay his opinion, and the defendants made no objections at 
that stage.  Cross-examination was necessary to bring these 
matters to light.  After a brief redirect, the defendants 
moved to strike the Edelman testimony as “founded on 
assumptions that have no basis in fact,” citing Tarmac Mid-
Atlantic, Inc. v. Smiley Block Co., 250 Va. 161, 458 S.E.2d 
462 (1995).  The plaintiff argued that it was premature to 
rule on a lack of factual foundation for the expert testimony 
because he had not yet completed his case in chief and that he 
intended to call further witnesses.  The court stated: “I’ll 
wait till the evidence comes out,” but further observed: “I’m 
not concerned about his arguments on methodology.  I think 
that becomes an issue for the jury.” 
 
The plaintiff then called four more witnesses, none of 
whom gave evidence that would provide any factual support for 
the expert’s assumptions to which the defendants had objected. 
The plaintiff rested and the defendants renewed their motion 
to strike the Edelman testimony.  The court overruled the 
 
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motion on the ground that the question of factual support for 
the expert’s assumptions created an issue for the jury. 
 
In these circumstances, we cannot say that the defendants 
waived their objections to the Edelman testimony.  The trial 
court was advised, before any evidence had been presented, of 
the probability of an objection and the grounds for it.  The 
trial court deferred a ruling until the evidence was 
presented.  At the first opportunity, after the flaws in the 
expert testimony had become apparent on cross-examination, the 
defendants moved to strike it.  The trial court postponed a 
ruling until the plaintiff had rested, at which time the 
defendants renewed their motion. 
 
One of the salutary purposes of our contemporaneous 
objection rule, now set forth in Rule 5:25, is to afford the 
trial judge a fair opportunity to rule intelligently on 
objections while there is still an opportunity to correct 
errors in the trial court, see State Hwy. Comm’r. v. Easley, 
215 Va. 197, 201, 207 S.E.2d 870, 873 (1974), and to protect 
the trial court from litigants asserting error on appeal that 
had not been raised at trial.  Shocket v. Silberman, 209 Va. 
490, 494, 165 S.E.2d 414, 418 (1969).  Here, as in 
Countryside, the party objecting to flawed expert testimony 
made no objection while the testimony was being given, but 
moved to strike at its conclusion, after the flaws had become 
 
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apparent, thus giving the trial court a proper opportunity to 
correct the error of admitting it.  See 263 Va. at 552 & n.2, 
561 S.E.2d at 682 & n.2. 
Conclusion 
 
Because the expert testimony was based upon fictional 
assumptions not supported by the evidence, it was speculative 
and unreliable as a matter of law and should have been 
stricken.  Because the defendants made a timely motion to 
strike the evidence and did not waive their objections to it, 
the trial court erred in denying their motion.  Because the 
jury found for the plaintiff on the issue of negligence and no 
error is assigned to that finding, and because there was 
evidence, other than the expert testimony, to support an award 
of damages, we will reverse the judgment and remand the case 
to the trial court for a new trial, limited to the issue of 
damages. 
Reversed and remanded.