Opinion ID: 1086522
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Materiality of Jiau’s information

Text: Finally, Jiau asserts the government should have called an expert to explain whether the insider information she provided was actually material to a reasonable investor. While the decision of whether to admit or exclude expert testimony is left to the sound discretion of the district court, Gen. Elec. Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 142-43 (1997), expert testimony that seeks to address “lay matters which [the] jury is capable of understanding and deciding without the expert’s help” is not relevant and is therefore inadmissible, Andrews v. Metro N. Commuter R.R. Co., 882 F.2d 705, 708 (2d Cir. 1989). In this case, no expert testimony was necessary to help the jury interpret the materiality of the insider information Jiau provided to her tippees. The surprise professed by BCM analysts in reaction to her information regarding Marvell and the trades they made to exploit that information could have conclusively demonstrated materiality. Basic Inc. v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224, 231-32 (1988) (defining materiality as whether a reasonable investor would have viewed the undisclosed information as having “significantly altered the total mix of information made available” (quotation marks omitted)). The jurors did not need an expert to 12 tell them that the information Jiau revealed made a noticeable difference in the investors’ thinking that was manifested in the reaction of the BCM analysts and their subsequent trading.