Plaintiff Navigators Specialty Insurance Company sued SVO Building One, LLC for reimbursement of $5.5 million (before accrued interest) paid in defense of claims that were not even potentially covered under the applicable insurance policy.
SVO filed a Daubert motion to exclude the testimony of Navigators’ expert witness André E. Jardini.
Law And Legal Expert Witness
André Emilio Jardini specializes in complex litigation, and his experience in this area is wide-ranging and diverse, including trial work in insurance bad faith and coverage cases, employment and wrongful termination cases, intellectual property, business torts, and real estate litigation.
In his career, Jardini has been the principal trial attorney in more than 50 lawsuits tried to jury verdict, each with exposure in the six-to-eight figure range. He also has been involved in environmental litigation, federal and multidistrict litigation, products litigation, and toxic tort litigation.
Discussion by the Court
Navigators proffered Jardini as an expert to opine on the proper reimbursement allocation for costs paid by Navigators in the Underlying Action.
SVO contended that the Court should exclude Jardini because his report is unreliable and irrelevant, as Jardini “ignored the applicable standard for determining whether attorneys’ fees and expenses may be reimbursed to an insurer set forth by the California Supreme Court.”
The Court agreed that Jardini is an improper expert under Rule 702 because his analysis incorrectly applied the operative legal standard and was thus irrelevant.
Jardini’s report explained that he “identified services that were possibly partially related to a defamation claim. In making this analysis, he had in mind the overwhelming import in the case of the various trade secret claims as opposed to the defamation claim as shown by SVO.”
But the standard is not simply whether attorney time is more likely than not related to defamation and it does not take into consideration the “overwhelming import” of a claim. Rather, the proper question is whether attorney time more likely than not “can be allocated solely to the claims that are not even potentially covered.”
Jardini’s application of a standard of “overwhelming import” to his assessment of costs attributable to the covered claims plainly departed from the established standards. Thus, the Court found that Jardini’s opinion is not only unhelpful, it is irrelevant as it does not have “a valid connection to the pertinent inquiry.”
Held
The Court granted SVO’s motion to exclude the testimony of André Jardini.
Key Takeaway
Expert testimony which does not relate to any issue in the case is not relevant and, ergo, non-helpful. Nothing in either Daubert or the Federal Rules of Evidence requires a district court to admit opinion evidence that is connected to existing data only by the ipse dixit of the expert.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Navigators Specialty Insurance Company V. SVO Building One, LLC |
| Docket Number: | 3:22cv7102 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, California Northern |
| Order Date: | April 30, 2026 |
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