Opinion ID: 222717
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: The Jacobsen factors

Text: Biamp contends the district court abused its discretion in permitting ClearOne to call Knudsen as an expert witness because ClearOne (1) disclosed its intent to call Knudsen one week prior to trial and four months after the expert discovery cutoff, and (2) failed to serve any of the Rule 26(a) disclosures, including the required expert report. We are not persuaded by these assertions, and we conclude, based on the four factors set forth in Jacobsen, that the district court did not abuse its discretion in permitting Knudsen to testify.
Biamp claims the district court's admission of Knudsen's testimony was both surprising and prejudicial. According to Biamp, the court's ruling was a surprise because the trial date was only one week away and because the deadline for submitting expert reports had long since passed. Biamp also alleges that the court's ruling was prejudicial because, as a result of ClearOne's untimely disclosure, Biamp was unable to impeach [Knudsen's] credentials, pursue countering evidence, or generally prepare for [its] defense. Aplt. Br. at 41 (citation omitted). We reject these arguments. As noted by the district court, Biamp should not have been surprised by ClearOne's desire to call Knudsen to testify regarding the evidence found on the WideBand defendants' computers. ClearOne and the WideBand defendants had been engaged in discovery disputes regarding that evidence for over a year, and Biamp received notice of the parties' motions and the district court's rulings regarding these disputes. Biamp was therefore on notice that ClearOne was attempting to obtain evidence from the WideBand defendants' computers and to introduce that evidence  if helpful to ClearOne  at trial. Consequently, Biamp should have anticipated the legitimate possibility that ClearOne would seek to introduce evidence obtained from the imaged computers and would need to call a Global representative in order to so. In addition, any prejudice Biamp suffered from the lack of notice regarding Knudsen's testimony was insignificant and thus does not persuade us to reverse the district court's denial of Biamp's motion for a new trial. Knudsen did not testify at trial regarding a new or complicated scientific theory in support of ClearOne's case. Instead, Knudsen, as a computer forensic expert, simply testified as to what information was discovered on the mirrored images of the WideBand's defendants' computers  information that Biamp knew ClearOne was seeking. Thus, while Knudsen's expertise in computer forensics was relevant to his explaining to the jury how he found fragments of the Honeybee Code on the computers of the WideBand defendants, Biamp was (or should have been) sufficiently equipped to cross-examine him. We therefore conclude that this factor does not weigh in favor of reversing the district court's denial of Biamp's motion for a new trial.
We also conclude that Biamp was able to cure some, if not all, of the prejudice it may have suffered as a result of the district court's ruling. For one, the district court required that ClearOne permit the defendants to depose Knudsen one day prior to trial. Although Biamp certainly would have preferred to depose Knudsen earlier, it was nevertheless able to learn the substance of Knudsen's testimony prior to trial. In addition, because Knudsen merely testified as to the information he found on the imaged computers, the defendants were able to call their own witnesses  Yang and Chiang  to testify as to why memory fragments containing the Honeybee source code were found on their computers.
The extent to which Knudsen's testimony disrupted the trial also weighs in favor of affirming the district court's order. Although Biamp claims that the admission of Knudsen testimony forced it to make a last-minute scramble at trial, Aplt. Br. at 41 (internal quotation marks omitted), the fact remains that ClearOne had been attempting to obtain evidence from the WideBand defendants' computers for months. Because Biamp should not have been surprised by ClearOne's attempt to introduce the evidence it finally obtained from the WideBand defendants' computers, we are not persuaded that Knudsen's testimony significantly disrupted the trial or Biamp's prepared defense of ClearOne's claims.
Finally, Biamp alleges that ClearOne acted willfully and in bad faith because it did not disclose its intent to call Knudsen as a witness until a week before trial. Biamp essentially argues that ClearOne's untimely disclosure in and of itself is evidence of bad faith. We disagree with this argument because the trial record shows that ClearOne tried for over a year to obtain evidence from the mirror images of the WideBand defendants' computers. And when Global was finally able to conduct its court-approved search of the mirror images and make that information available to ClearOne, the deadline for expert reports had long since passed and the trial date was fast approaching. Given this fact, we conclude that ClearOne did not act willfully or in bad faith, despite its late disclosures. In sum, after weighing the four factors set forth in Jacobsen, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in permitting ClearOne to call Knudsen as an expert witness. Because ClearOne, despite its best efforts, did not receive Global's imaging scans until shortly before trial, the district court reasonably concluded that ClearOne's failure to comply with Rule 26(a)'s disclosure requirements was justified.
Biamp argues that the district court erred in denying its Rule 59(e) motion to amend the judgment. More specifically, Biamp argues that the final judgment should have been amended because the district court erred in (a) rejecting the jury's $956,000 compensatory damages award and doubling it to $1,912,000, (b) entering the compensatory damages award against Biamp and the WideBand defendants jointly and severally, and (c) entering a duplicative $694,000 unjust enrichment award. Aplt. Br. at 46. We review the denial of a Rule 59(e) motion for an abuse of discretion. Loughridge v. Chiles Power Supply Co., 431 F.3d 1268, 1275 (10th Cir.2005). A district court abuses its discretion if it made a clear error of judgment or exceeded the bounds of permissible choice in the circumstances. The abuse of discretion standard includes review to determine that the discretion was not guided by erroneous legal conclusions. Id. (quotations omitted).