Opinion ID: 196888
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Purchasers' evidence of resale

Text: 17 Defendants complain further that several of the purchasers from RCGA were permitted to testify about the price they realized on resale of the coins. See United States v. DiMarzo, 80 F.3d 656, 659-60 (1st Cir.1996). Their argument that this testimony was outside the competence of lay witnesses under Fed.R.Evid. 701 is far off the mark. This testimony was not opinion testimony at all, but a simple recitation of an observed phenomenon: the price paid for the coins. A more cogent argument is that these may have been distress prices, rather than fair market prices. This might have been a ground for exclusion in a clear case of a distress sale, but whether they were distress sales or not, in the context of the evidence in this case, was a question of fact properly left to cross-examination and ultimately to the jury. This was the procedure correctly permitted by the district judge.