Opinion ID: 3015576
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: exclusion of gary j. dipippo’s testimony

Text: Jaasma argues that the District Court erred in excluding the testimony of her expert, Gary J. DiPippo. The District Court concluded that DiPippo would not be able to give a reliable opinion regarding the environmental status of the property in 2001 because the only available soil and groundwater data was from 1996 and 18 2003. Therefore, the Court found that “[a]ny conclusion that the health hazard existed at the end of the lease term is . . . too speculative to be admissible, particularly in the context of later tests in 2003, two years later, indicating that there is no health hazard apparently or benzine is not present.” We review the decision to admit or reject expert testimony under an abuse of discretion standard. Schneider ex rel. Estate of Schneider v. Fried, 320 F.3d 396, 404 (3d Cir. 2003); see also United States v. Trala, 386 F.3d 536, 541 (3d Cir. 2004). To qualify as an expert under Fed. R. Evid. 702, a witness must have sufficient qualifications in the form of knowledge, skills, and training. In re Unisys Sav. Plan Litig., 173 F.3d 145, 155 (3d Cir. 1999). In addition, expert testimony must satisfy the standards set forth in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), that the expert testimony (1) must be based on sufficient facts and data; (2) must be the product of a reliable methodology; and (3) must demonstrate a relevant connection between that methodology and the facts of the case. In short, an expert must have the requisite “qualifications, reliability, and fit.” Unisys Sav. Plan, 173 F.3d at 156. The District Court does not appear to have questioned DiPippo’s qualifications, and it seems clear from the record that DiPippo’s qualifications pass muster. He is a civil and environmental engineer who is registered in New Jersey and is a manager of an environmental consulting firm. He has been working in environmental engineering for thirty years and has extensive experience in the area of environmental remediation and regulatory compliance. The District Court instead used the reliability calculus to exclude DiPippo’s testimony. The Court apparently believed that DiPippo was going to testify to the actual condition of the property as of October 31, 2001, based on extrapolations from the available data. Jaasma correctly contends that the Court misunderstood the purpose of DiPippo’s testimony. Jaasma’s proffer was not that DiPippo would have testified to the actual condition of the property in 2001, but rather that he would have established the uncertainty surrounding the environmental status of the property between the termination of the lease in 2001 and the issuance of the NFA in 2004. He also would have offered his opinion that Jaasma’s decision to delay marketing the property was reasonable 19 because, even in the face of below-regulation levels of hazardous substances in 1996, the data left open the potential for danger in 2001. In his deposition testimony, DiPippo offered several reasons why Jaasma might reasonably worry about the environmental safety of the property at the time the lease was terminated, notwithstanding that the 1996 test data (the most recent testing available as of 2001) revealed that the concentrations of contaminants were below regulatory levels. First, he stated that it was not clear from the 1996 groundwater and soil samples that there was no “continuous source” of contamination because “two of the highest concentrations noted for benzene . . . in the vicinity of the tanks . . . occurred in the later years.” Thus, DiPippo represented that he could not definitively determine from the 1996 data whether the concentrations of benzene, for example, would continue to decline after 1996. In addition, he could not say, without further information, whether certain compounds had degraded or would continue to degrade during that time. Second, DiPippo testified that the samples taken October 30, 2001, were “of inadequate size to do volatiles analysis . . . So that while I look at these numbers and they all are below those cleanup criteria, there is still this question lingering about whether those results should be relied upon at this point.” Finally, DiPippo stated that, even considering the data from the most recent sampling in 2003, “there are some lingering questions on the site” as to the risk of “vapor intrusion” because the concentrations previously thought safe are now considered to have been too permissive. In Jaasma’s submission, this testimony is highly relevant to her damages claim and to the reasonableness of her caution in marketing the property once the petroleum leak was discovered. We agree with Jaasma that, while it may have been speculative for DiPippo to testify to the actual condition of the property in 2001, there appears to be nothing unreliable about DiPippo’s testimony regarding the uncertainty surrounding the property during that time. Defendants’ main counterargument is that DiPippo’s report is “merely a summary of the environmental documents submitted by defendants” which was not based on “independent testing.” This argument has no support. We do not require an expert to base 20 his or her opinions on independent data collection or field research; rather, the question is “whether an expert’s data is of a type reasonably relied on by experts in the field . . . [and] whether there are good grounds to rely on this data to draw the conclusion reached by the expert.” In re TMI Litigation, 193 F.3d 613, 697 (3d Cir. 1999); see also Fed. R. Evid. 703 . There is no doubt that the data DiPippo relied upon was reliable. Instead the question was whether DiPippo was justified in making conclusions about the uncertainty surrounding the environmental status of the property in 2001 based on 1996 and 2003 data. In sum, DiPippo’s testimony satisfies the Daubert standard. He clearly has the requisite qualifications. His proposed testimony “fits” as it goes to the risks associated with remediation efforts, which are relevant to Jaasma’s claim for damages and her mitigation argument. Because the District Court’s decision to exclude DiPippo was based on a misunderstanding of the purpose of the expert testimony, and because the testimony appears to meet the Daubert standard, we find that the Court abused its discretion.