Expert Witness Testimony Challenging Causation Between Accident & Injury Should Have Been Excluded Due to Flawed Methodology

While he submitted several articles to support his causation methodology, he admitted that he or an employee of the institute at which he worked authored the articles.  The court noted that the Louisiana Supreme recently addressed the adequacy of expert testimony in another rear-end collision claim involving the same expert witness. Blair v. Coney, 2019-00795 (La. 4/3/20), reh’g denied, 2019-00795 (La. 7/9/20), in which the court found the experts methodology failed to meet the Daubert standard. Given that the same witness and same methodology were in question, the appellate court found that the trial court erred in denying the claimant’s motion in limine to exclude the testimony of the defendant’s expert witness based on his use of a flawed methodology that fails to meet the requirements of C.E. art. 702(A)(2).  Allowing the witness to testify at trial based on the flawed methodology was also an abuse of the trial court’s discretion.