Plaintiffs, Monterrey’s Grill Inc. filed suit against the Defendant, Axis Surplus Insurance Company, alleging that the Defendant breached its obligations under the insurance policy by not paying a claim for hurricane damage to Plaintiff’s commercial building. During discovery, Plaintiff disclosed Emory “Les” Covan as its damages expert and produced a 44-page replacement cost value estimate signed by Covan.
Axis Surplus Ins. Co. sought to exclude the testimony of Plaintiff’s retained damages expert witness, Covan.
Construction Expert Witness
Emory “Les” Covan is an estimator. He was retained to testify about the subject insurance claim, damages sustained as a result of the subject loss, costs of construction/necessary repairs and/or damages sustained by Plaintiff.
Discussion by the Court
Defendant filed a motion to strike Plaintiff’s damages expert, Emory “Les” Covan, under Daubert, arguing his estimate merely “parroted” the opinions of the expert who prepared the initial draft of the estimate.
In this case, Covan conducted his own inspections and reviewed pertinent documents before signing the estimate. He explained that he reviewed photographs of the damage to the insured property; he conducted a virtual inspection of the property using a three-dimensional video of the property; he reviewed engineering reports detailing the damages, moisture levels, and the recommended repairs to the property; and he relied on the Xactimate program for the costs included in the estimate.
Moreover, for every line-item in the estimate that he was asked about during his deposition, Covan was able to explain the source of information (e.g., photograph, report, etc.) and reason for including that item in the estimate.
Even though Covan did not prepare the initial draft of the estimate, the record shows that he did not simply adopt the initial draft of the estimate as his own without doing any additional work.
As a result, the Court concluded that the fact Covan did not know how the initial estimate was prepared or how, if at all, it differed from his estimate goes to the weight of the estimate, not its admissibility. Likewise, the fact that there were only minor differences between Covan’s estimate and the initial draft concerned the weight of the estimate, not its admissibility.
Held
The Court denied Axis Surplus’ motion to excliude the testimony of Emory “Les” Covan.
Key Takeaway:
An expert cannot “simply repeat or adopt the findings of another expert opinion without attempting to assess the validity of the opinions relied upon.” Thus, one expert cannot simply adopt the opinion of another expert as his own without conducting his own analysis.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Monterrey’s Grill Inc. v. Axis Surplus Ins. Co. |
| Docket Number: | 3:23cv24580 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola Division |
| Order Date: | May 13, 2025 |
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