Opinion ID: 807056
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Expert Credentials

Text: Both Vandervort and Riggs, whom Western challenged, worked for Stress Engineering. Each held a Ph.D. in his respective field, mechanical engineering and material science. Only five percent of Vandervort’s work was litigation based. Neither had specific experience in the stucco industry. Vandervort had worked extensively with positive displacement pumps designed like the 6 No. 10-31271 Predator, and Riggs’s trade as a failure analyst involved examining malfunctioning machinery in search of the cause. We conclude both men were well-qualified as experts “by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education.” Fed. R. Evid. 702. The conception of expertise urged by Western, by which Vandervort and Riggs could not testify about a stucco pump because stucco is not their trade, could make expert certification decisions a battle of labels – label the needed expertise narrowly and the offered expert’s field broadly. See Huss v. Gayden, 571 F.3d 442, 455-56 (5th Cir. 2009). The district court was within its wide discretion to conclude that these offered witnesses had the qualifications to state a reliable opinion on the subjects for which they were certified.