{"id":100388,"date":"2017-04-25T06:33:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-25T10:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sjcivil.com\/?p=100388"},"modified":"2024-03-27T06:33:02","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T10:33:02","slug":"award-reversed-no-expert-testimony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sjcivil.com\/award-reversed-no-expert-testimony\/","title":{"rendered":"Award Reversed Because of No Expert Testimony"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Executive Summary:\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0A Washington concrete contractor, Salinas Construction, Inc. (SCI), was awarded $404,000 of its requested $425,000 for a job at U.S. Army Joint Base Lewis-McChord only to see this decision reversed in district court.\u00a0 The problem was that SCI did not offer expert testimony, despite warnings that it was needed.<\/p>\n[The information for this article is taken from review of\u00a0<em>Construction Claims Monthly<\/em>, MEASURED-MILE METHOD REQUIRES EXPERT OPINION, October 2016, pages 75-76).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The impact to the Contractor.<\/strong>\u00a0 SCI\u2019s claim of impact was a common one \u2013 they were adversely impacted by the general contractor, CJW Construction, Inc. (CJW).\u00a0 According to SCI, the general contractor was late in delivering concrete, handed over poor subgrade to pave upon, and delayed the job such that SCI had to perform in poor weather conditions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>I know the business and don\u2019t need an expert.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I don\u2019t know what SCI was thinking, so I am taking a leap and making my own opinion here, but it may have been that SCI didn\u2019t feel as if a 3<sup>rd<\/sup>\u00a0party expert was necessary in this case.\u00a0 SCI used John Salinas II to calculate damages likely because Mr. Salinas knows the business and, secondly, the cost of Mr. Salinas was zero.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot argue the reasons stated for doing the analysis in house, but finding an expert witness would certainly have provided a more objective opinion on damages.\u00a0 However, there didn\u2019t seem to be a problem with objectivity in SCI\u2019s presentation of damages.\u00a0 More importantly here was the law:\u00a0 offering expert testimony would have precluded the defendant from getting the decision reversed.<\/p>\n<p>The defendant was able to ask for judgement as a matter of law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50(b).\u00a0 This allowed the defendant to deem Mr. Salinas\u2019 testimony inadmissible simply because his testimony did not rely upon experts or other resources such as seminars, books, et cetera.\u00a0 Simply put, he was downgraded to a layperson.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I can imagine this hurt bad \u2013 to have such a great result in one court only to have it reversed by another court.\u00a0 That pain isn\u2019t going away.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t experienced this exact source of pain, but I have been involved with expert witnesses as a contractor and I\u2019ve approved payments to these witnesses.\u00a0 It can be spendy and I can see why a contractor would do anything to avoid this payment(s).<\/p>\n<p>We had marginal success in my largest matter where we spent tens of thousands on expert witnesses.\u00a0 I cannot know if our award would have been only a fraction of what we took home had we not gone to out-of-house experts, but I know we did take home a check much larger than zero.<\/p>\n<span class=\"et_bloom_bottom_trigger\"><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Executive Summary:\u00a0\u00a0A Washington concrete contractor, Salinas Construction, Inc. (SCI), was awarded $404,000 of its requested $425,000 for a job at U.S. Army Joint Base Lewis-McChord only to see this decision reversed in district court.\u00a0 The problem was that SCI did not offer expert testimony, despite warnings that it was needed. [The information for this article [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":104522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,38],"tags":[155,156],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Award Reversed Because of No Expert Testimony<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Explore legal complexities when awards are reversed due to lack of expert testimony. 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