This case arises from the shooting death of John Fuller, (the “Decedent”), and wounding of DaJohn Foster at the Winbranch Apartment Complex (the “Property”). Plaintiffs assert a premises liability claim based on Defendants’ alleged failure to take adequate steps to protect them from violent crimes committed by third parties not resident at the Property. Defendant Winbranch Complex, LLC owned the Property and Defendant My Management, LLC served as the third-party fee manager for the Property.
Plaintiffs retained Jennifer C. St. Clair, an economist, to provide expert testimony on the pecuniary and/or monetary value of the Decedent’s life, and Thomas R. Stutler, a “security specialist.”
Defendants, Winbranch Complex, LLC, and My Management, LLC d/b/a Apartments Near Me (together, the “Defendants”) filed a Daubert motion to exclude Plaintiff’s experts.
Security Expert Witness
Thomas R. Stutler, CPP, JD served as leader for security at two corporations, spanning approximately ten years.
Economics Expert Witness
Jennifer Coats St. Clair, MA is a self-employed Labor Economist with over nine years of experience calculating litigation damages, specifically focusing on the economic, financial, and business issues arising in legal disputes. She earned a Master of Arts in Economics from the University of Memphis in 2016, where she also achieved All But Dissertation (“ABD”) status after passing doctoral comprehensive examinations.
She has taught Economics at the University of Memphis and Christian Brothers University. Since 2017, St. Clair has served as a consulting economist or econometrician on over 130 federal and state cases, with a substantial portion of her practice involving the calculation of economic losses in personal tort claims.
Discussion by the Court
I. Thomas R. Stutler, CPP, JD
After summarizing a version of the events underlying the lawsuit, Stutler’s report announces various legal conclusions, including that “the victims were legally on the property” and that “as tenants and guests on the property the Defendants owed a duty to the victims to provide a reasonable safe environment.”
He then summarized crime statistics for the surrounding area—apparently in support of his assertion of foreseeability—before listing various failures that, if they occurred, “would be a major security failure.”
The Court held that Stutler’s report did not satisfy Rule 702 and therefore must be excluded.
Finally, Stutler offered a few opinions that could—depending on the analysis—be the stuff of expert testimony, including: an assessment of Property’s security posture, ten bullet-pointed recommendations for improving that posture; something that looks vaguely like an opinion on breach (although couched in terms of inactions that would be a “serious security failure”); and opinions on causation. The problem is that these opinions are wholly unexplained—they are assertions more than opinions, with no indication that they are the result of a reliable methodology reliably applied.
II. Jennifer C. St. Clair, MA
Plaintiffs retained St. Clair to calculate the present value of the economic losses arising from the shooting death of Decedent.
St. Clair first assumed that Fuller worked for the entire duration of his life. She calculated this to be 18.17 years based on the Markov Process Model of Labor Force Activity. In that scenario, St. Clair found that the value loss would be $830,828. In the second scenario, she assumed that Fuller worked until the Social Security retirement age of 67. The value loss would be $896,139 in that case.
It should be noted that Defendants did not point to any unique facts or specific medical history that might render any opinion concerning Decedent’s future earnings or household services wildly misleading if not accounted for.
Next, Defendants argued that St. Clair failed to accurately calculate income lost because she relied on national average wages as opposed to Fuller’s actual income. Defendants also noted that they have never received income information from Plaintiffs. St. Clair relied on the American Community Survey to determine income specifically for barbers. Defendants also argued that St. Clair committed the same errors in her household services calculation, pointing to her failure to consider Fuller’s actual contributions to the household. St. Clair relied on expectancy data from The Dollar Value of a Day: 2020 Dollar Valuation.
The Court held that historical earnings and household services are “relevant” to the earnings calculation but not dispositive. St. Clair’s determination that Fuller would have earned more over the course of his working life than the earning capacity that may have been suggested by his salary “is not unreasonable as a matter of law.”
St. Clair’s analysis “involved a degree of speculation, as does all analysis of future damages, but not unrealistic speculation.”
Held
The Court denied Defendants’ motion regarding Jennifer St. Clair’s expert report and granted Defendants’ motion regarding Thomas Stutler’s report.
Key Takeaway
Stutler purports to rest his opinion on his “knowledge, training, skill, and expertise,” but even experts who base their opinion on honed expertise must explain how they applied their methodology in the case at hand to arrive at their opinions. Experts must show their work, and if they do not, their opinions must be excluded. The Court’s gatekeeping function under Daubert requires more than simply taking the expert’s word for their testimony.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Foster V. Winbranch Complex LLC |
| Docket Number: | 2:24cv2433 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Tennessee Western |
| Order Date: | May 15, 2026 |
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