Opinion ID: 48759
Heading Depth: 6
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Genuine Fact Issue

Text: The district court determined that, as the Watsons neither undermined the veracity or the quality of the engineering report nor produced an expert opinion of their own, there was no genuine fact issue as to whether Allstate properly denied coverage. The Watsons contend nonetheless that, in making this determination, the district court improperly disregarded the conclusions reached by Hometest, the mold assessment company that initially inspected the property for Allstate. Hometest had speculated that under-slab leaks caused some of the damage in the house. The Watsons insist that Hometest’s report creates a fact issue sufficient to defeat Allstate’s summary judgment motion. The district court acknowledged that facially Hometest’s report appears to state that the under-slab plumbing leaks damaged particular rooms in the Watsons’ house; but the court ultimately determined, based on testimony from the report’s author, Ernest Pankonien, that “the intent of the [Hometest] report was to recommend to [Allstate] that they hire an expert to determine the cause of the damage.” Specifically, the district court highlighted Pankonien’s testimony that,based on the [] limited visual inspection and the sampling that was conducted [by Hometest], individuals and/or qualified firms with more experience and qualifications in structural and leak and cause origin determination analysis should be retained in order to more fully delineate what caused the mold and what needs to be done to correct the sources of moisture intrusion. 14 The district court concluded that, in light of this testimony, the Hometest report did not contradict the conclusion reached by the engineering firm that the under-slab leaks did not cause interior damage. Consequently, the court found the summary judgment record devoid of any evidence creating a genuine fact issue as to the applicability of the Policy’s exclusion of coverage for the damage allegedly caused by the under-slab leaks. We recognize that “the grant of a motion for summary judgment is often inappropriate where the evidence bearing on crucial issues of fact is in the form of expert opinion testimony.”21 Nevertheless, when a party opposing summary judgment fails to present evidence sufficient to make an issue of an expert's conclusions —— such as contrary opinion evidence or evidence tending to undermine the expert’s credibility or qualifications —— and when “the trier of fact would not be at liberty to disregard arbitrarily the unequivocal, uncontradicted, and unimpeached testimony of an expert witness,” expert testimony may form the basis of summary judgment.22 We agree with the district court that Pankonien’s testimony makes clear that the Hometest report did not purport to establish with any certainty the actual causes of the water and mold damage 21 See Webster v Offshore Food Service, Inc., 434 F.2d 1191, 1193 (5th Cir. 1970). 22 Id. at 1193-94. 15 to the Watsons’ property. Consequently, that report cannot be viewed as contradicting the conclusions of the engineering firm. Moreover, the trier of fact in this case would not be “at liberty to disregard arbitrarily” the report of a licensed structural engineering firm specializing in detecting the causes of water and mold damage. Of course, had Pankonien defended his report’s findings more vigorously, this case could have presented the kind of “battle of the experts” that typically renders summary judgment presumptively inappropriate. In light of Pankonien’s testimony, however, no such “battle” took place in this case. The district court was presented with only (1) the Watsons’ speculation —— not implausible but unsupported —— that the under-slab leaks caused interior mold and water damage, and (2) a specific expert opinion excluding the subsurface leaks as a cause of that damage. We are satisfied that the court did not err in concluding that, under these circumstances, no genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether the Watsons’ damage is excluded from coverage.