Opinion ID: 4524554
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Plaintiff's Expert Witness

Text: Boudreau argues that it was reversible error for the district court to overlook the expert witness opinion of Stephen Melia on summary judgment. He asserts that the district court erroneously drew its own conclusions about [Shaw's'] obligations in the field of loss prevention and retail security.9 Boudreau mischaracterizes the district court's treatment of Melia's expert opinion. The district court did not draw its own conclusions about the field of retail security but rather explained that Melia's opinion about Shaw's' purported breach of retail security protocols was not relevant to the duty analysis under Maine law. As said, there is no authority for the proposition that a store's own loss prevention policies give rise to a duty absent foreseeability. Boudreau also asserts that Melia testified that Shaw's owed a duty to prevent [MacCalister] from causing harm to customers and that the district court should have accepted this conclusion. It is not clear that Melia's opinion makes such a claim, as its primary focus seems to be that Shaw's violated standard retail security procedures, not that such procedures 9 We assume that the evidence considered at summary judgment was admissible as it does not change our conclusion that Shaw's did not owe Wendy Boudreau a duty. - 25 - created a legal duty under Maine law. But even if Melia's opinion makes such a claim, Boudreau's argument would fail because the presence of duty is a legal question to be resolved by the court, not an expert. Nieves-Villanueva v. Soto-Rivera, 133 F.3d 92, 99 (1st Cir. 1997).