Plaintiffs Shazad Buksh (“Buksh”) and Krishna Gathani (“Gathani”) brought this case alleging, among other causes, discrimination and retaliation by Defendants William Sarchino, Southwestern Vermont Medical Center and Southwestern Vermont Health Care. To calculate their damages, both Plaintiffs disclosed the economic expert witness Stephanie Seguino, Ph.D.
Economics Expert Witness
Stephanie Seguino, Ph.D. is “Emerita Professor Economics at the University of Vermont (UVM) with expertise in quantitative data analysis as well as gender and racial inequality and labor market discrimination,” who held her position at UVM from 1995 to 2022, as well as the positions of Chair of the Economics Department and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
She received a Ph.D. in Economics from American University in 1994. Seguino has also “published extensively in peer-reviewed journals,” has “two co-authored edited books,” serves “as associate editor of two economics journals,” and is on the editorial board of a third economics journal.
Discussion by the Court
I. Updated Buksh Report
On December 10, 2024, Seguino signed a new expert report for Buksh. The purpose of this report was to “provide an estimate of the Plaintiff’s loss in earnings… and the present value of lifetime medical costs associated with bladder cancer treatment.” Seguino now estimates Buksh’s lost income at $1,844,549, and the “present value of projected medical costs for bladder cancer treatment” at $10,054,800.
II. Updated Gathani Report
On December 10, 2024, Seguino signed a new expert report for Gathani.The updated report calculates Gathani’s “lost income due to retaliation at SVMC” in the amount of $384,940.96.
In her report, Seguino writes that “Gathani was delayed in attaining the qualifications for licensure as a surgical podiatrist by one year and three months due to the defendants’ alleged conduct, which required the plaintiff to pursue his residency in another program.” Seguino thus estimates his income losses “using information from his pay stubs and bonus payment from his first employment since completing his residency.” Accordingly, Seguino calculates Gathani’s “lost income” as “1.25 years of salary as a surgical podiatrist.”
A. Motion to Exclude Seguino’s Opinion on Buksh
Defendants sought to exclude Seguino’s expert testimony, arguing in part that Seguino’s opinion is not based upon reliable data and methodology. The Court agreed.
In Parts I, II, and III of her opinion, Seguino used only two data points to calculate what Buksh’s salary would have been as a surgical podiatrist: the salaries she had access to, those of the other two Plaintiffs in this case (Gathani and Saman).
If the two data points are considered a sample that is meant to represent surgical podiatrists, then the problem here is not necessarily the use of a small sample of data to estimate the salary of a group; the problem is that no explanation has been given about why the sample set of two could be representative of the entire group.
Buksh argued that “there is government data on the earnings of podiatrists but not surgical podiatrists” and thus “the defense criticizes Seguino for not using a large sample of incomes from surgical podiatrists across the country but does not state that such a resource is available.” Yet Buksh has the burden to show at least that it is “more likely than not” that his expert’s testimony is based on sufficient facts or data, and is the product of reliable principles and methods.
Buksh also argued that Seguino’s calculations are conservative and they favor the defense because she took the difference between the BLS data for nonsurgical income to calculate the difference between that and surgical income, rather than using Buksh’s actual income figures—if she had used his actual income, then “the loss in Part II would have been considerably higher.”
But this argument echoes the problems the Defendants pointed out with Seguino’s methods—why is the BLS data for nonsurgical income “considerably” higher than Buksh’s actual income? And why didn’t Seguino consider that in her calculations—if there is a factor that is depressing Buksh’s salary as a non-surgical podiatrist below the average of what other non-surgical podiatrists make, might that same factor mean that he could make considerably less than the population of two she is comparing his salary to?
B. Motion to Exclude Seguino’s Opinion on Gathani
Seguino bases her estimate of Gathani’s lost income for his first year. She did not subtract his actual income in that year (earned in New York, at a new podiatry residency program) from the amount of “lost income.” Nor did she adjust the amount at all, for the reasons explained in footnote one of her report. Essentially, then, Seguino has copied the exact income that Gathani earned as a surgical podiatrist in his first year and estimated that this amount is his lost income in this case.
There is not much analysis that Seguino adds, nor does she use much “methodology” for the Court to evaluate. In her report, she stated that: “I estimate Gathani’s income losses, using information from his pay stubs and bonus payment from his first employment since completing his residence.” As explained above, this means that Seguino copied the number from Gathani’s first year of practice.
Held
The Court granted both motions to exclude Stephanie Seguino’s testimony.
Key Takeaway
Here, the trier of fact is not helped by an expert explaining that Gathani could have earned the exact amount in his first year of practicing as a surgical podiatrist as what he did, in fact, earn in his first year of practicing as a surgical podiatrist.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Buksh V. Foot |
| Docket Number: | 2:21cv190 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court for the District of Vermont |
| Order Date: | July 06, 2026 |
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