Opinion ID: 858083
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Application to Dr. Kennedy’s Testimony

Text: With this background in place, we now move to the key question on appeal: whether the district court properly excluded Dr. Kennedy’s testimony. Before proceeding, we note that although the court’s written 16 No. 11-3061 decision does not precisely track the requirements of Rule 702, the court rejected Dr. Kennedy’s testimony on reliability grounds, reflecting an implicit application of the analysis required under the rule. Regarding the threshold inquiry of Rule 702—whether the proposed expert is qualified—the parties agree that the district court implicitly held that Dr. Kennedy is qualified to give expert testimony on premises security. He has several degrees in sociology and educational sociology, has published extensively in the field of criminology and security administration, has trained specifically in physical premises security, and has testified as an expert witness in many similar cases. Carthage does not challenge Dr. Kennedy’s qualifications. The main point of contention is whether Dr. Kennedy followed a reliable methodology in reaching his conclusions and reliably applied it to the specific facts of this case. To summarize his process, Dr. Kennedy reviewed witness statements, including the testimony of Carthage’s former director of security; visited and inspected the security conditions at Tarble Hall; reviewed the various security protocols at Tarble and Carthage generally; reviewed published statistics and police reports involving sexual assault on campus; compared Carthage’s practices with those recommended in the IACLEA guidelines; and surveyed the professional literature on sexual assault and campus-security practices.3 3 The parties dispute whether Dr. Kennedy’s approach should qualify as a “forensic methodology” or merely a “totality (continued...) No. 11-3061 17 Drawing from this investigation and his experience and expertise, Dr. Kennedy identified the standard of care for college premises security and concluded that Carthage’s practices fell short of that standard in numerous respects. Specifically, he opined that Carthage should have installed a prop alarm on the basement door at Tarble Hall; that the lobby should have been staffed between midnight and 2 a.m.; that visitors should have been escorted to dorm rooms; that the building should have used security cameras; and that students should have been told to close their doors when they were not socializing, especially late on weekend nights. As a general matter, this methodology fits the factual and legal context of this case. To be sure, Dr. Kennedy’s approach “may not have been ‘scientific,’ but it was both ‘technical’ and ‘specialized’ ” within the meaning of Rule 702, which “does not condition admissibility on the state of the published literature, or a complete and flaw-free set of data.” United States v. Mikos, 539 F.3d 706, 711 (7th Cir. 2008); see also United States v. Herrera, 704 F.3d 480, 486 (7th Cir. 2013) (“expert evidence is not limited to ‘scientific’ evidence . . . [but] includes any evidence created or validated by expert methods and presented by an expert witness that is shown to be reli- 3 (...continued) of the circumstances” approach. The label is not important. What matters is whether he consulted reliable sources and provided reasoned explanations connecting the source material to his conclusions. 18 No. 11-3061 able”). Dr. Kennedy was offering nonscientific expert testimony in a particular field—premises security, or more specifically, campus security—that does not easily admit of rigorous testing and replication. “[E]xpert testimony that is more technical than scientific is governed by the same criteria as the admission of scientific expert testimony.” Dhillon, 269 F.3d at 869. The district court had two major criticisms of Dr. Kennedy’s methodology: (1) he relied on industry guidelines that are only aspirational; and (2) he failed to distinguish acquaintance rape from stranger rape in Carthage’s recent history. With regard to the IACLEA standards, there is no question that these guidelines, standing alone, do not establish the standard of care. As the district court noted, they are only aspirational practices, not a formal industry standard; even formal industry standards are not dispositive as to negligence liability. Michaels v. Mr. Heater, Inc., 411 F. Supp. 2d 992, 997 (W.D. Wis. 2006). But the relevant question for admissibility purposes is not whether the IACLEA guidelines are controlling in the sense of an industry code, or even how persuasive they are. It is only whether consulting them is a methodologically sound practice on which to base an expert opinion in the context of this case. For a claim of this nature, we are convinced that it is. The IACLEA guidelines are an authoritative set of recommended practices specific to the field of campus security and are regularly consulted by campussecurity professionals. The extent of Carthage’s deviations from these practices may surely inform an expert opinion as to whether Carthage met its standard of care. Carthage may argue, of course, that the IACLEA guideNo. 11-3061 19 lines are only advisory, or outdated, or overly general, and for those reasons should not be taken as persuasive on the standard of care. But that argument goes to the weight of the expert’s testimony, not its admissibility. The district court abused its discretion in excluding this part of Dr. Kennedy’s testimony. Carthage cites Varner v. District of Columbia, 891 A.2d 260 (D.C. 2006), as support for its assertion that courts have “specifically rejected the use of the IACLEA recommendation as ‘standards’ for residence hall security.” But Varner considered this question only as a matter of sufficiency of the evidence at summary judgment, not as it concerned the admissibility of expert testimony. The plaintiffs in Varner introduced expert testimony that a university violated a national standard of care by failing to conform its keycard-access protocols to the IACLEA recommendations. The court nevertheless upheld the grant of summary judgment to the defendants, holding that “[a]spirational practices do not establish the standard of care which the plaintiff must prove in sup- port of an allegation of negligence.” Id. at 272. But Varner did not hold that the testimony of the expert in question was inadmissible because of his reliance on the IACLEA standards. Indeed, the admissibility of various pieces of expert testimony was not at issue in Varner—only whether the content of that testimony sufficed to overcome summary judgment under local negligence standards. Importantly, deviation from the IACLEA recommendations appeared to be the only basis in Varner for the expert’s conclusion that the university violated the standard of care. See id. at 271-72. That differs from the present case, in which the IACLEA stan20 No. 11-3061 dards were only one factor informing Dr. Kennedy’s opinion. Both Carthage and the district court also fault Dr. Kennedy for not relying on “community stan- dards”—that is, he did not specifically compare security practices at Carthage to schools similarly situated in terms of location and size. But while references to community standards could be part of a reliable meth- odology, such an analysis is not necessary for expert testimony to be admissible. Strict reliance on this factor to exclude the expert testimony would be out of step with the sort of “flexible” inquiry called for under Rule 702. Daubert, 509 U.S. at 594. And a dispositive focus on community standards is especially inappropriate given that Wisconsin does not follow the locality rule for professional negligence. See Shier v. Freedman, 206 N.W.2d 166, 173-74 (Wis. 1973) (rejecting the locality rule in the context of medical malpractice). Local custom or practice may be evidence of the applicable standard of care, but they do not establish the standard of care any more than national industry guidelines. Again, Carthage is free to argue that community standards would have been a preferable benchmark, but that again is a matter of evidentiary weight, not admissibility. Certainly it is the sort of issue that can be explored adequately via the normal adversarial process of “[v]igorous cross-examination, presentation of contrary evidence, and careful instruction on the burden of proof.” Daubert, 509 U.S. at 596; see also Ortiz v. City of Chicago, 656 F.3d 523, 536 (7th Cir. 2011) (“[t]he admissibility determination [under Rule 702] is not intended to supplant the adversarial process”). No. 11-3061 21 The district court did not abuse its discretion, however, in criticizing Dr. Kennedy’s failure to distinguish between acquaintance rape and stranger rape when evaluating prior instances of sexual assault at Carthage. As part of his analysis, Dr. Kennedy re- viewed Carthage’s published crime statistics, which noted eight instances of sexual assault on campus between 2003 and 2007, five of which occurred in 2007 alone. This history of sexual assault informed Dr. Kennedy’s opinion as to what specific security measures would have been reasonable under the circumstances. As the district court observed, however, these eight crimes were all instances of acquaintance rape, while the assault on Lees was stranger rape. Relying on these crime statistics without accounting for this distinction does not reflect the application of reliable principles and data to the facts of this case. The district court properly excluded this aspect of the proposed expert testimony. On the other hand, Dr. Kennedy’s testimony about the insecure basement door—specifically, the absence of a prop alarm—is directly relevant to the facts of this case. The district court did not separately address this aspect of his testimony, which is sufficiently reliable—prop alarms are recommended under the IACLEA stan- dards—and was reliably linked to the facts of this case. This part of Dr. Kennedy’s testimony should not have been excluded. As to the remaining points underlying his opinion—the lack of a front-desk monitor between midnight and 2 a.m., the open-door “socializing” policy, the apparently lax hall monitoring, and the absence of security cameras—his report lacks sufficient analysis tied to experiential data about the use of these 22 No. 11-3061 practices in college residence halls. Perhaps that analysis is theoretically possible, but on the present record we find no abuse of discretion regarding these aspects of the proposed expert testimony. For completeness, we note that the Rule 702 requirement that Dr. Kennedy’s testimony will assist the jury effectively merges with the question whether his testimony sufficiently speaks to the standard of care. Carthage insists that Dr. Kennedy’s testimony—even if reliable under Rule 702 and Daubert—addresses only foreseeability, which does not establish the standard of care under Wisconsin negligence law. For the reasons already explained, we agree that foreseeability is not the proper focus in this case—although the confusion is perhaps understandable in light of the mixed messages in the Wisconsin caselaw on this question. Compare Behrendt, 768 N.W.2d at 575 (“ ‘A lack of foreseeable risk in a specific case may be a basis for a no-breach determination, but such a ruling is not a no-duty determination.’ ” (quoting R ESTATEMENT (T HIRD ) OF T ORTS: L IABILITY FOR P HYSICAL H ARMS § 7(a) cmt. j (Proposed Final Draft No. 1, 2005))), with Gritzner, 611 N.W.2d at 912 (Wis. 2000) (“The first element, a duty of care, is established under Wisconsin law whenever it was foreseeable to the defendant that his or her act or omission to act might cause harm to some other person.”). But even though Dr. Kennedy’s affidavits reflect this legal imprecision, the deficiency is hardly fatal for Lees. The task of instructing the jury on the applicable law belongs to the judge, not the expert witness. The admissi- bility of Dr. Kennedy’s testimony turns on whether its No. 11-3061 23 substance speaks to the standard of care that Carthage was required to meet. Evaluated from this perspective, at least some aspects of Dr. Kennedy’s proposed testimony are admissible; based on his expertise, investigation, and informed analysis, he is prepared to testify as to particular security measures he believes were required under the circumstances and that Carthage failed to provide. To repeat, Dr. Kennedy’s general testimony about the IACLEA security standards is admissible, as is his more specific testimony faulting the lack of a prop alarm on the basement door of Tarble Hall. On these points, the clear import of Dr. Kennedy’s report and affidavits is that Carthage deviated from the required standard of care. That is exactly the sort of expert testimony that one would expect on the subject of premises security; indeed, his testimony provides the necessary factual support for an element of the claim. To this extent at least, Dr. Kennedy’s testimony is admissible under Rule 702, and with that testimony Lees has the expert support for her claim required by Wisconsin professional-negligence law. Accordingly, the summary judgment in favor of Carthage College is V ACATED , and the case is R EMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. 4-16-13