FEDERAL APPELLATE · 200943 / 55

United States v. Noel

United States v. Noel, 581 F.3d 490 (2009). Decided in 7th Cir..

COURT: 7th Cir.
DECIDED: 2009
CITATION: 581 F.3d 490
OUTCOME: Excluded
STANDARD: Other (Rule 901, 403, or state rule)
CITED BY: 112 later opinions (CourtListener)

THE HOLDING

Testimony from the government's computer-forensics witness that images on the defendant's computer met the federal definition of child pornography was inadmissible — unhelpful as lay opinion and no more helpful as expert opinion, because it supplied only a bottom-line conclusion. The court declined to decide the scope of her qualification because the testimony failed either way.

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 OPINIONUnited States v. Noel, 581 F.3d 490↗

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

The court’s reasoning

The witness gave no basis whatsoever for her conclusion, and an expert who supplies nothing but a bottom line supplies nothing of value to the judicial process. Although experts may opine on ultimate issues, their opinions may not be divorced from the expert bases that qualified them as witnesses in the first place.

From the opinion

“An expert who supplies nothing but a bottom line supplies nothing of value to the judicial process.”
United States v. Noel, 581 F.3d 490 (2009)

Grounds argued

This ruling turned on 3 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.

Ipse dixit: Whether the opinion is connected to the underlying data by anything more than the expert's own assertion. Named for the phrase in General Electric Co. v. Joiner, this is the ground that catches conclusions the report never shows its work for.
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 exclusion an examiner is most likely to walk into, because the question sounds like a fact question. Anything that requires applying a legal definition — is this child pornography, was this a trade secret, is this personal data — has to be answered as observed characteristics plus the reasoning, or declined. A conclusion with no stated basis is excluded whether the witness is qualified or not.

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.

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 IPSE DIXIT

General Electric Co. v. Joiner 522 U.S. 136 (1997) EXCLUDED
United States v. Owens 18 F.4th 928 (2021) ADMITTED
United States v. Dillingham 320 F. Supp. 3d 809 (2018) EXCLUDED
Synergeering Group v. Jonatzke 478 B.R. 846 (2012) ADMITTED IN PART

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. Walker 908 F.3d 252 (2018) ADMITTED

ON SCOPE CREEP

ClearOne Communications v. Biamp Systems 653 F.3d 1163 (2011) ADMITTED
United States v. Hill 818 F.3d 289 (2016) ADMITTED
Passlogix v. 2FA Technology 708 F. Supp. 2d 378 (2010) ADMITTED IN PART
Furmanite America v. T.D. Williamson 506 F. Supp. 2d 1126 (2007) ADMITTED IN PART

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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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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.