Opinion ID: 3011261
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Evidentiary Issues Relating to

Text: Pettingill's Testimony Pettingill, an economist, testified on Elcock's behalf regarding her economic losses. He prepared an economic damages model that relied on several empirical assumptions about the extent of Elcock's injuries, her earning capacity before and after the accident, and her life expectancy. Kmart challenged each of these assumptions before the District Court, and raises those objections again on appeal. Kmart, in essence, argues that Pettingill inflated each of these figures in rendering his expert opinion, and in doing so, rested his damages opinion on assumptions wholly lacking foundation in the record. We review the District Court's decision to admit Pettingill's testimony for abuse of discretion. _________________________________________________________________ 11. Judge Garth does not agree with the majority of the panel that the District Court properly exercised its discretion in limiting Kmart's cross- examination of Copemann. Copemann had pled guilty to violating 18 U.S.C. S 641 (rescribed in the margin at footnote 10). The extent of Copemann's crime was found to be $331,513. Kmart was prevented from bringing this fact to the attention of the jury when it cross-examined Copemann. Nor could Kmart examine Copemann about the conveyance and the disposal of those moneys, all of which was accomplished without authority. As the majority acknowledges, the facts underlying a plea are more probative of untruthfulness than merely a recitation of a violation of a United States Code section or a recitation of the particular crime's elements. While Judge Garth agrees that the District Court is entitled to deference when it exercises its discretion, he is of the view that, in this instance, the District Court abused its discretion by restricting the cross-examination of Copemann to the extent that it did. He would so hold. 30
We have held that [a]lthough mathematical exactness is not required, [expert] testimony of post-injury earning capacity must be based upon the proper factual foundation. Benjamin v. Peter's Farm Condominium Owners Ass'n., 820 F.2d 640, 643 (3d Cir. 1987). Put another way, an expert's testimony [regarding future earnings loss] must be accompanied by a sufficient factual foundation before it can be submitted to the jury. Gumbs v. International Harvester, Inc., 718 F.2d 88, 98 (3d Cir. 1983). In both Benjamin and Gumbs, we held that an expert's lost future earnings opinion was too speculative to be presented to the jury. In Benjamin, the expert relied solely on the plaintiff 's personal assessment of his ability to re-enter the work force in assuming that the injured plaintiff would make only $10,000 a year as a result of the injuries he sustained. 820 F.2d at 642-43. We held that this assumption, absent sufficient factual predicates, id. at 642, was a castle made of sand, id. at 643 (internal quotation marks omitted). In so doing, we set aside a jury verdict for the plaintiff, because the district court failed to exclude the expert opinion that relied on this flawed assumption. See id. In Gumbs, we held similarly. The expert in Gumbs calculated the plaintiff 's future earnings loss based on plaintiff 's remaining life expectancy of eighteen years rather than plaintiff 's remaining work-life expectancy of seven and one-half years. 718 F.2d at 98. The expert also assumed that, but for his accident, the plaintiff would in the future earn twice his average annual income for the four years preceding the accident, as well as receive $1700 in annual fringe benefits even though there was no evidence that the plaintiff had ever received fringe benefits in the past. Id. Reversing on other grounds, we stated that, on remand, the expert could not include these assumptions in his testimony before the jury, unless the assumptions were accompanied by a sufficient factual foundation. . . . Id.12 _________________________________________________________________ 12. Other Courts of Appeals have similarly excluded expert opinions not grounded in the facts of a case. See, e.g., Quinones-Pacheco v. American Airlines, Inc., 979 F.2d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 1992) (Because [the expert's] 31
Turning to the facts of this case, we must examine the disputed assumptions that Pettingill used in arriving at his lost economic opportunities opinion. Pettingill testified that, in preparing his economic damages model on Elcock's behalf, he had received a copy of Copemann's report, which presumably described Elcock as either 50 to 60 or 50 to 75 percent disabled. Nonetheless, Pettingill assumed that Elcock was 100 percent disabled when arriving at his opinion. Pettingill also testified that he was familiar with Elcock's past earnings, which were relatively meager. Elcock's husband had testified that she worked fourteen hours a day as a Mary Kay representative, and the record shows that she earned $5,774 in 1995 (before the injury) and $1,070 in 1996 (after the injury). Pettingill nevertheless assumed, in rendering his opinion, that Elcock would have made $6 an hour, working 40 hours a week. Thosefigures indicate that Pettingill presumed that Elcock would have made a $12,480 a year but for her 100 percent disability, more than twice her pre-injury earnings. Pettingill also did not discount for the $1,070 that Elcock was still able to earn even with her injury. Moreover, although Pettingill at one point did suggest that the jury could discount from his 100 percent disability figure so as to take account of the possibility that Elcock was not completely disabled, Pettingill persisted in employing the 100 percentfigure. As did the experts' assumptions in Benjamin and Gumbs, Pettingill's assumptions in the instant case lack foundation in the record. Though in supplemental post-appellate oral argument briefing Elcock has pointed out the fact that in the past she had worked, inter alia, as a pastry chef and a baker making more than $9 an hour, the underlying data _________________________________________________________________ analysis was predicated on an assumption not supported by the record-- the assumption that [the plaintiff] suffered from a permanent, total disability--the district court did not err in excluding the proffer.); In re Air Crash Disaster at New Orleans, La., 795 F.2d 1230, 1233 (5th Cir. 1986) (We find the economist's `opinion' that the collective loss of inheritance for the three children was $1,778,873 to be completely airborn[e], premised as it was on assumptions without basis in the real world of [the decedents].). 32 supporting these assertions was not part of the trial record. Rather, Elcock failed to adduce evidence at trial (or at any time before the District Court) laying a foundation for the fact that she could have obtained employment at those wages in the Virgin Islands before her injuries. Thus, the assumption that Elcock could have earned over $12,000 a year when she had only made $5,774 in the year of her injury should have been excluded for lack of foundation. The same can be said of Pettingill's failure to take into account the fact that Elcock continued to earn money as a Mary Kay salesperson after her injury. According to Elcock's tax records, she earned $1,070 in 1996, the year after her slip and fall. Pettingill ignored these more concrete numbers rooted in the record, which suggest that Elcock was not completely disabled, in favor of his arbitrary 100 percent disability figure. He made similarly questionable assumptions about Elcock's life expectancy. In constructing his damages model, Pettingill assumed that Elcock would live and work to the average retirement age expected of African American females. He did not adjust this estimate to reflect the fact that Elcock's own expert, Payne, testified that Elcock's poorly controlled diabetes could cut her life span--and perhaps her working life--short. Ignoring the real world of  Carmelita Elcock renders Pettingill's opinion inadmissible. In sum, we believe that Pettingill's economic damages model relied on several empirical assumptions that were not supported by the record. Although Pettingill suggested to the jury that it might discount the 100 percent disability figure that he plugged into his economic model, this suggestion is not sufficient to change the result. In the absence of clearer instructions or emphasis by the witness or the court, a jury is likely to adopt the grossfigure advanced by a witness who has been presented as an expert. Accordingly, the District Court abused its discretion in admitting Pettingill's model as evidence. Cf. Benjamin, 820 F.2d at 643; Gumbs, 718 F.2d at 98. 13 (Text continued on page 35) _________________________________________________________________ 13. Interestingly, though the foundation requirement for expert testimony is well developed in the case law and in the experience of trial lawyers and judges, neither our opinions in Gumbs and Benjamin nor the 33 evidence treatises themselves expressly ground this requirement in one of the Federal Rules of Evidence or in the legislative history or advisory committee notes accompanying the Rules. Like the case law and trial practice governing cross-examination for bias, see United States v. Abel, 469 U.S. 45, 49 (1984), the foundation requirement is a rule of evidence that can only be found in the interstitial gaps among the federal rules. In these terms, Article VII would likely be the best source for the rule, as it governs and is titled Opinions and Expert Testimony. Rules 702 and 703 bear on foundation analysis, but neither Rule addresses it in explicit terms; nor do the advisory committee notes accompanying the Rules. Nonetheless, a lost future earnings expert who renders an opinion about a plaintiff 's future economic harm based on economic assumptions not present in the plaintiff 's case cannot be said to assist the trier of fact, as Rule 702 requires. This type of an opinion misleads the fact-finder and arguably does not comply with the fit requirement of that Rule. See supra Section II.A (discussing this requirement); see also 2 Stephen A. Saltzburg, Michael M. Martin & Daniel J. Capra, Federal Rules of Evidence Manual 1272-75 (7th ed. 1998) (detailing Rule 702 and collecting cases in which courts have excluded expert testimony from economists because their damages models did notfit with the facts in evidence). Rule 703 embodies a similar requirement, which does not clearly set forth the foundation rule used in Gumbs and Benjamin, but which does bear on the analysis inhering in those cases. Rule 703, titled Bases of Opinion Testimony by Experts, provides that [t]he facts or data in the particular case upon which an expert bases an opinion or inference may be those perceived by or made known to the expert at or before the hearing. If of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject, the facts or data need not be admissible in evidence. While these limitations and the notes accompanying them do not specifically address the exclusion of expert testimony based on assumptions lacking a foundation in the record, it is not a stretch from the requirement that other experts in the particular field would reasonably rel[y] on such data informing opinions . . . on the subject, id., to suggest that an expert should not depend on fictional or random data when rendering an opinion about the quantum of economic harm in a particular plaintiff 's case. Cf. Saltzburg, supra, at 1397-99 (discussing Rule 703 and collecting cases in which courts have excluded 34