Expert Witness Profiler

Tag: compensation

  • Human Resources Expert Was Not Allowed to Opine on Overtime Exemption Status

    Human Resources Expert Was Not Allowed to Opine on Overtime Exemption Status

    Plaintiffs are current and former AutoZone employees, all of whom held roles as Store Managers between the years 2019 and 2022 and worked under district managers who oversaw operations in Montana.

    Due to AutoZone’s demographic structure, the collective currently includes Plaintiffs that work in AutoZone stores outside of Montana. Plaintiffs alleged that AutoZone willfully misclassified them as overtime-exempt, denying them overtime compensation for hours of work in excess of forty hours per week, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

    Defendants moved to exclude Plaintiffs’ experts Dr. Liesl M. Fox and Ramona Powell.

    Statistics Expert Witness

    Liesl Mae Fox has been a statistical consultant for over twenty-five years, including conducting analyses in the fields of litigation and medical research, and has testified as an expert witness.

    Want to know more about the challenges Liesl Fox has faced? Get the full details with our Challenge Study report.

    Human Resources Expert Witness

    Ramona Powell is a nationally certified Senior Professional in Human Resources. With a proven track record as an expert witness, Powell provided professional opinions and testimony in a wide range of employment-related matters.

    Get the full story on challenges to Ramona Powell’s expert opinions and testimony with an in-depth Challenge Study.

    Discussion by the Court

    A. Defendants’ motion to exclude expert Dr. Liesl Fox 

    Defendants sought to exclude Plaintiffs’ expert, Dr. Liesl Fox, from serving as an expert witness in this case. It appeared that Fox relied on data provided by Plaintiffs’ counsel to determine the average hours worked by each Plaintiff. According to Defendants, this data conflicts with the testimony of the individual Plaintiffs, rendering Fox’s opinions unreliable.

    The Court was inclined to grant Defendants’ motion to exclude the testimony of expert Dr. Liesl Fox. The calculations of the remaining Plaintiffs’ average hours worked “constitute basic math that a jury can compute without the opinion of an expert.” Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Court reserves ruling on the motion at this time.

    B. Defendants’ motion to exclude expert Ramona Powell

    Next, Defendants requested that the Court exclude Ramona Powell pursuant to Rule 702 “because her report is unreliable, her testimony improperly invades the province of the jury by making legal conclusions, and allowing her testimony under such circumstances would confuse the jury and be unfairly prejudicial to AutoZone.” The Court reserves ruling on the motion at this time.

    However, to the extent Powell offered opinions on the ultimate issue in this case—whether Defendants properly classified Plaintiffs as exempt from FLSA’s overtime requirements—such opinions will be excluded. These opinions invaded the province of the Court and/or the jury.

    Held

    The Court reserved ruling on both motions to exclude the testimony of Dr. Liesl Fox and Ramona Powell.

    Key Takeaway

    The Court must determine whether the witness is qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, and whether the opinion will help the trier of fact.

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Richter V. Autozoners, LLC
    Docket Number: 9:22cv47
    Court Name: United States District Court, Montana
    Order Date: April 30, 2026
  • Economic Damages Expert’s Reliance on Medical Opinions is Appropriate

    Economic Damages Expert’s Reliance on Medical Opinions is Appropriate

    This case stems from a vehicle collision that happened in July 2022 in Gallup, New Mexico.

    The Plaintiff, Jimmy Woodall claimed the crash caused severe and disabling injuries, including physical and emotional pain, permanent impairment, and reduced enjoyment of life. He sought compensation for medical costs, lost wages, and long-term care.

    Woodall retained an expert, Mr. Justin Blok, MBA, CFE, CLP, to provide an opinion regarding Woodall’s lost earning potential, the present value of his life care plan, and other pecuniary matters. Blok relied on Todd Capielano‘s life care plan in determining Woodall’s alternative earnings and damages. Capielano, in turn, relied on the opinions of Woodall’s treating physicians, to form his own assessment of the costs Woodall was likely to face. Defendants challenged Blok’s qualifications, reasoning, and methodology, as well as his reliance on the opinions of Woodall’s treating physicians vis a vis Capielano’s life care plan.

    Economic Damages Expert Witness

    Justin Blok is a Certified Licensing Professional and Certified Fraud Examiner. He serves as a Partner at Whitley Penn LLP. He is also a Managing Director in its Forensic, Litigation & Valuation Services practice.

    Blok specializes in economic, accounting, valuation, and strategy issues related to intellectual property, complex commercial disputes, and general business transactions. He has testified in private arbitration, Federal and State Courts.

    Blok is consistently named to the IAM Patent 1000 list of top patent experts. He has lectured on damages topics at several universities. These include the University of Houston Law Center, Baylor University School of Law, and South Texas College of Law.

    Want to know more about the challenges Justin Blok has faced? Get the full details with our Challenge Study report.  

    Discussion by the Court

    Qualifications

    Blok has an undergraduate degree in risk management and finance, a master’s degree in business administration, and a master’s degree in accounting—all financial and business-related credentials—and he has been called as an expert to discuss financial matters.

    While Defendants argued that Blok is not a physician and is not qualified to diagnose Woodall’s conditions, the Court held that Blok will not opine on whether Woodall can work, nor will he opine on the causation of Woodall’s injuries. He therefore does not need to have a medical background. To the extent his valuations may rely on medical opinions regarding the work Woodall is capable of doing, such reliance is appropriate and typical for economists.

    Methodology

    The Defendants claimed that Blok’s projections were flawed because they included the full financial ramifications of Woodall’s medical conditions without accounting for the fact that Defendants can be held liable only for the portion attributable to the vehicle collision.

    The Court disagreed. It explained that these kinds of critiques go to the weight of the testimony, not its admissibility. Questions about the assumptions underlying an expert’s economic projections are best addressed through cross-examination, not exclusion.

    As for the concern about jury confusion, the Court noted that jurors would already be tasked with deciding how much of the Plaintiff’s current condition was caused by the collision. That same reasoning would naturally extend to financial damages.

    Finally, the Court emphasized that if Blok performed his calculations assuming a certain fraction of the expenses were attributable to Defendants, he might have overstepped his role and strayed into medical territory. By presenting neutral calculations and leaving the apportionment to the jury, Blok stayed within proper bounds. The Court concluded that the Defendants could challenge his assumptions during cross-examination and denied the motion to exclude his testimony.

    Held

    The Court denied the Defendants’ motion to exclude the opinions of Justin Blok.

    Key Takeaway:

    The alleged shortcomings in the underlying medical opinions used to create the life care plan and, in turn, the economic projections by Blok are properly addressed on cross-examination, not by excluding Block as an expert entirely.

    Please refer to the blog previously published about this case:

    Life Care Planning Expert’s Testimony on Future Medical Care Needs Admitted

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Woodall v. W. Express, Inc.
    Docket Number:
    1:23cv862
    Court Name: United States District Court for the District of New Mexico
    Order Date: April 25, 2025
  • Economics Expert’s Opinions on the Outcome-Based Compensation Structure Excluded

    Economics Expert’s Opinions on the Outcome-Based Compensation Structure Excluded

    Allstate Insurance Company sells property, casualty, and life insurance in California through independent and exclusive agents. The Plaintiffs, who were exclusive agents for the Defendant from 1990 to 2023 and had signed Exclusive Agency Agreements, have filed a class-action lawsuit. Their claim centers on unreimbursed business expenses they incurred, including costs for rent, internet, licensed staff, payroll taxes and fees, mandatory insurance coverage, marketing, licensing, a cloud-based telephone system (Allstate Agency Voice), and computer equipment.

    Pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702, the Plaintiffs filed a motion seeking to exclude the expert report of the Defendant’s witness, Professor Paul Oyer. A key point of contention in their motion is Professor Oyer’s assertion that the Defendant provided “indirect” reimbursement for exclusive agents’ business expenses via outcome-based compensation.

    The Court first addressed Plaintiffs’ Daubert Motion, and then considered whether Plaintiffs have met the requirements for class certification.

    Economics Expert Witness

    Paul Oyer is the Mary and Rankine Van Anda Entrepreneurial Professor and Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research and the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Labor Economics.

    He has done several studies of how firms pay and provide incentives for their workers. Oyer looked at how salespeople and executives react to incentive systems and why some firms use broad-based stock option programs. 

    Want to know more about the challenges Paul Oyer has faced? Get the full details with our Challenge Study report.

    Discussion by the Court

    Motion to Exclude the Opinions of Professor Paul Oyer

    Plaintiffs specifically contested Professor Oyer’s opinions that: (1) Defendant reimbursed exclusive agents’ business expenses “indirectly” by providing outcome-based compensation; and (2) that “Plaintiffs’ approach for damages based on expenses alone is conceptually flawed” because “[e]valuating the harm to members of the proposed class must be analyzed in the context of the total compensation to the [e]xclusive [a]gency, specifically the compensation used to cover the [e]xclusive [a]gency’s expenses that Plaintiffs seek as damages,” and “individualized inquiry is necessary to estimate the harm” to the agencies, if any.

    The Plaintiffs contended that both of Professor Oyer’s opinions are irrelevant to the Court’s class certification analysis because they offer legal conclusions and conflict with California law regarding the reimbursement of business expenses.

    Defendant argued that these opinions are relevant and admissible because Professor Oyer’s opinions “concerning the wide variations in the types and amounts of Plaintiffs’ expenses show that a determination of reasonable and necessary business expenses will change depending on the specific facts and circumstances of a particular [e]xclusive [a]gency’s business” and thus that individualized issues predominate.

    Analysis

    The Court concurred with the Plaintiffs, finding that the challenged opinions constituted impermissible legal conclusions. Here, Professor Oyer repeatedly opined that individualized inquiry is necessary to assess the proposed class’s damages stemming from unreimbursed business expenses. Professor Oyer also opined that Defendant’s “outcome-based compensation . . . is an efficient compensation method that indirectly compensates the [e]xclusive [a]gency for its efforts (including expenses)” and “any member of the proposed class who received compensation to cover the [e]xclusive [a]gency’s allegedly reimbursable expenses is not harmed.” The Court found that these opinions addressed “central legal questions” raised by Plaintiffs’ Motion for Class Certification, namely commonality and predominance.

    In other words, Oyer’s opinions regarding commonality and predominance improperly invaded the province of the Court.

    Moreover, the Plaintiffs demonstrated that the proposed class meet the requirements of Class Certification.

    Held

    The Court granted the Plaintiff’s motion to exclude the testimony of Paul Oyer.

    Key Takeaway:

    Experts may not opine on “matters of law for the Court.” Plaintiffs challenged Oyer’s assessment of the proposed class’ damages. His opinions on the necessity of the individualized inquiry and the outcome-based compensation structure improperly invaded the province of the Court.

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Canchola v. Allstate Ins. Co.
    Doket Number: 8:23cv734
    Court: United States District Court for the Central District of California
    Order Date: March 28, 2025