In this defamation action, Plaintiffs Techtronic Industries Company Limited and Techtronic Industries Factory Outlets, Inc. (“Plaintiffs” or “TTI”) sued Defendant Victor Bonilla (“Defendant” or “Bonilla”) for statements made about TTI and its business practices by Bonilla in two reports he authored and published on his website Jehoshaphat Research in February and June 2023.
Bonilla filed a motion to exclude TTI’s expert Jeffrey W. Kopa, CFA under Fed. R. Evid. 702, arguing that Kopa’s qualifications and opinions failed to meet the standards required by Daubert and the Federal Rules of Evidence.
Valuation Expert Witness
Jeffrey William Kopa, CFA is a partner and managing director at AlixPartners in the Investigations, Disputes and Risk practice. He holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with an emphasis on finance and accounting from the University of Michigan and a Master of Business Administration degree and Master of Science degree in Finance from Indiana University School of Business. Kopa has developed an extensive litigation-consulting, financial, valuation, and investing practice over his past 20 years of professional experience.
He has analyzed damages through his litigation-consultant services in a variety of areas including antitrust, audit malpractice, breach of contract, false advertising, intellectual property litigation, purchase price and transaction disputes, shareholder disputes, fraudulent conveyance, and preference actions. Kopa has experience examining damages and lost profits caused by alleged wrongful acts and has been qualified as an expert to present damages opinions and statistical analyses in state, federal, and bankruptcy courts. In addition to performing damages analyses, he has performed accounting investigations, assessed credit worthiness, advised creditors and board members, participated in capital raising efforts and worked to restructure and refinance companies.
Discussion by the Court
In his initial report, Kopa offered the following opinions:
- The market for the common stock of TTI was open, developed, and efficient before and around the time of the Jehoshaphat Reports (“JR”) were publicly issued based on the results of standard market efficiency tests.
- The share price of TTI’s common stock declined in February 23, 2023 and June 6, 2023, following the First Report and Second Report, respectively, and the negative abnormal return following the First Report’s publication was highly statistically significant.
- Defendant profited from trading activity associated with the JR Reports.
- TTI incurred approximately US$152 thousand in incremental professional fees to address the JR Reports.
- TTI’s incremental compensation plans have a total attributable value to the JR Reports of approximately US$23.6 million.
Defendant challenged Kopa’s second, fourth, and fifth opinions referenced above. Defendant noted that, with respect to the third opinion, Bonilla’s profits are not an item of damages that Plaintiffs may claim, but he did not otherwise challenge Kopa’s analysis or conclusion that Bonilla profited from trading activity associated with the reports.
Qualifications
Bonilla contended that Kopa offered no testimony on the salient issues that would be helpful to the jury, such as identifying which damages resulted from the alleged false and defamatory statements and whether the LTIP executive compensation program was necessary. This argument appeared to go to the last prong of the Daubert analysis and not to Kopa’s qualifications to offer a damages opinion in this case. As courts in this Circuit have noted, “the qualification standard for expert testimony is ‘not stringent’ and ‘so long as the expert is minimally qualified, objections to the level of the expert’s expertise go to credibility and weight, not admissibility.’”
Given Kopa’s education, experience, and credentials, the Court found that Kopa is at least minimally qualified to offer damages opinions in this case.
Methodology
In formulating his opinions, Kopa utilized the methodology of an “event study” to analyze the impact of Bonilla’s reports on TTI’s stock. An event study is a statistical regression analysis that examines the effect of an event—such as the release of information—on a dependent variable, such as a corporation’s stock price. Kopa testified that he combined a quantitative analysis of the change in TTI’s stock with a qualitative loss causation analysis of TTI-focused news.
Bonilla argued that although Kopa purports to conduct an event study to show the connection between the First and Second Reports and the stock drop, he did not use any methodology to determine if the stock drops were due to the alleged false and defamatory statements, as opposed to being due to true statements or opinions in the reports.
As event studies are a “common method” of establishing loss causation, the Court found Kopa’s methodology to be generally accepted in the scientific community and therefore reliable.
Kopa also used the net present value technique, a commonly accepted methodology, to calculate TTI’s damages. Bonilla argued that Kopa’s analysis of the legal and accounting bills did not use an accepted methodology at all; rather, he just added them up. Bonilla complained that Kopa did not analyze whether the legal and accounting work performed was necessary.
For the same reason, he challenged Kopa’s testimony about the executive compensation issue contending Kopa merely asserts a but-for test that is unscientific and unreliable. Whether or not the services were needed does not appear to be an opinion that Kopa is offering.
Net present value analyses are an acceptable and common methodology used by financial experts. Basically, the Court found that Kopa’s causation assumption did not render his damages opinion inadmissible.
Helpfulness to the Jury
TTI contended that Kopa did not simply look at a stock market drop as Bonilla suggests. TTI represented that Kopa’s opinions are formed based upon a statistical causal analysis utilizing an event study. Bonilla’s arguments to the contrary in an effort to exclude the opinions go more to the weight the jury should give the opinions and not to their admissibility. Finally, Bonilla complained that some of the calculations are simple math calculations for which an expert is not needed. However, this is not a basis to exclude the expert.
Held
The Court denied Defendant Bonilla’s Daubert motion with respect to Jeffrey W. Kopa’s damages opinions.
Key Takeaway
Relevant expert testimony logically advances a material aspect of the proposing party’s case and fits the disputed facts.
While performing simple mathematical calculations or conversion of money from Hong Kong to U.S. dollars may not necessarily require expert testimony, to the extent that Kopa is permitted to testify, his performance of these calculations and conversions will be helpful to the jury.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Techtronic Industries Company Limited V. Bonilla |
| Docket Number: | 8:23cv1734 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Florida Middle |
| Order Date: | March 06, 2026 |
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