FEDERAL DISTRICT · 200925 / 55

Smith v. Pacific Bell Telephone

Smith v. Pacific Bell Telephone Co., Inc., 662 F. Supp. 2d 1199 (2009). Decided in E.D. Cal..

COURT: E.D. Cal.
DECIDED: 2009
CITATION: 662 F. Supp. 2d 1199
OUTCOME: Excluded
STANDARD: Daubert / Rule 702
CITED BY: 4 later opinions (CourtListener)

THE HOLDING

The opinion of a witness the court accepted as qualified in GPS technology and computer forensics was held inadmissible under Rule 702, because the opinion he was offered for concerned the reasonableness of the defendants' decision to terminate the plaintiff — a subject outside his expertise.

EXCLUDED

CHECK THIS ENTRY AGAINST THE SOURCE

Every entry in this docket was written from the opinion itself, and this is the copy that was read. If the opinion does not support what is written here, the entry is wrong — tell us and it will be corrected or removed rather than softened.

READ THE OPINIONSmith v. Pacific Bell Telephone, 662 F. Supp. 2d 1199↗

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On this page

The court's reasoning
From the opinion
Grounds argued
Practice note
Terms used on this page
Rulings on the same grounds

The court’s reasoning

The court accepted the credentials in GPS and computer forensics but found a mismatch between those credentials and the subject matter of the proffered opinion. The problem was not one of GPS expertise or experience as such, but a lack of expertise with respect to the subject at issue.

From the opinion

“The problem is not one of GPS expertise or experience, per se, but a lack of expertise and experience with respect to the subject matter at issue”
Smith v. Pacific Bell Telephone Co., Inc., 662 F. Supp. 2d 1199 (2009)

Grounds argued

This ruling turned on 2 of the eight arguments that recur across the docket. Each is defined the same way on every entry, so the same ground can be followed across rulings that reached opposite results.

Fit to the issue: Whether the opinion helps decide a fact actually in issue. Testimony can be entirely reliable and still be excluded because it answers a question the case does not ask.
Scope creep: Whether the examiner stayed inside the technical question and out of intent, credibility, and legal conclusions. It is the most avoidable ground on this list and one of the most common.

Practice note

Practice note — our reading, not the court’s

EDITORIAL. THIS PARAGRAPH IS NOT PART OF THE HOLDING AND WAS NOT SAID BY THE COURT.

This is the cleanest fit exclusion in the docket: the qualifications were conceded and the opinion still went out, because it was about whether an employer acted responsibly rather than about what the GPS data showed. When counsel asks for an opinion on whether a decision was reasonable, the answerable version is what the data would and would not have told the decision-maker.

Everything above this panel — the holding, the reasoning, the quoted line — is a report of what the court decided and can be checked against the linked opinion. This paragraph is our own judgement about what a testifying examiner should do differently, and it should be cited as that or not at all.

Terms used on this page

Every term below is defined in the forensic glossary — what it is, why a case turns on it, and what happens in the matter when it is mishandled.

FRE 702

One ruling is not a rule. These are the other entries in the docket argued on the same grounds, most-cited first — including the ones that came out the other way, which are the ones worth reading before relying on this entry for anything.

ON FIT TO THE ISSUE

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals 509 U.S. 579 (1993) ADMITTED
Wellogix v. Accenture 716 F.3d 867 (2013) ADMITTED
ClearOne Communications v. Biamp Systems 653 F.3d 1163 (2011) ADMITTED
United States v. Noel 581 F.3d 490 (2009) EXCLUDED

ON SCOPE CREEP

ClearOne Communications v. Biamp Systems 653 F.3d 1163 (2011) ADMITTED
United States v. Noel 581 F.3d 490 (2009) EXCLUDED
United States v. Hill 818 F.3d 289 (2016) ADMITTED
Passlogix v. 2FA Technology 708 F. Supp. 2d 378 (2010) ADMITTED IN PART

THIS ARGUMENT IN YOUR MATTER

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The Daubert Docket
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Daubert and digital evidence
The argument this docket is the evidence for: why an opinion stated one level too strongly is an admissibility problem under Rule 702(d).
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Twelve questions about an expert's methodology, mapped to the failure modes these rulings keep finding, with the remediation for each gap.
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Attorney advertising / expert services. Each entry summarises a decision as it appeared in the opinion linked from that entry, on the day the entry was written. Decisions are reversed, vacated, superseded, and distinguished, and the text of Federal Rule of Evidence 702 was itself amended effective 1 December 2023 — check the current status and subsequent history of any ruling before relying on it. Nothing here is legal advice, none of it is a prediction about how any court will rule, and it is not a substitute for the rules, standing orders and case law of your own forum.