Expert Witness Profiler

Tag: Hurricane

  • Engineering Expert Allowed to Opine on Fenestrations

    Engineering Expert Allowed to Opine on Fenestrations

    This case arises from an insurance policy and its alleged breach. Riva’s luxury high-rise condominium development sustained damage from Hurricane Ian.

    The issue Steadfast raised with the Court now is how Riva’s expert arrived at his estimate. Riva hired Dr. Anurag Jain, an engineer, to inspect the property. Dr. Jain and his team investigated the property over the course of multiple days, focusing on the roofs, windows, door systems, interiors, and exteriors of the building. But they didn’t knock on every door. Instead, Jain focused on the interiors and fenestrations (windows and glass doors) in 43 of 161 condominium units, capturing 27% of the total. The units he inspected were selected in accordance with the “qualitative” sampling methods outlined in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (“ASCE”) guidelines. In his report, Jain explains that this choice was meant “to cover a sufficiently large sample of units and windows and doors across the buildings and various exposures with multiple units on each floor and each stack of the buildings.”

    At bottom, rather than inspect every unit—a time-consuming and expensive process—Jain determined the level of damage in the building by analyzing the losses observed in the sample. Since he suggested replacing or repairing a specific percentage of windows and sliding glass doors in the sample, he applied the same percentage to all windows and glass doors across the building. Put simply, he extrapolated.

    Motion to Exclude

    Steadfast looked at Jain’s report and saw a house of cards. In its view, his opinions are unreliable for two main reasons. First, the damage could have been caused by Hurricane Irma in 2017, which Jain did not sufficiently rule out. Second, Steadfast claimed that the math is broken—arguing that extrapolation is a clumsy shortcut that will force it to pay for repairing perfectly good windows. To keep the jury from hearing a word of it, Steadfast sought to exclude Jain’s testimony.

    Engineering Expert Witness

    Dr. Anurag Jain has investigated more than 3,000 hurricane-damaged buildings, including losses from Hurricane Ian, and has testified in depositions and trials involving wind-related structural damage.

    He holds a Ph.D. in structural engineering (wind engineering emphasis) and a master’s degree in structural engineering from Johns Hopkins University, as well as a Bachelor of Technology in civil engineering from Banaras Hindu University.

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

    Discussion by the Court

    A. Hurricane Irma

    Steadfast’s argument that Jain did not rule out alternative causes of the property damage is this: because he opined that the “duration” of Hurricane Ian’s high winds caused the damage, he should have also calculated whether the duration of Hurricane Irma, from 2017, could have caused the same damage.

    The problem with this argument is straightforward—Jain did consider Irma. He testified that Riva’s property was designed to withstand Hurricane Ian, but the duration of the strong winds caused the building to succumb to its pressure.

    But Jain didn’t just throw up his hands because the data was sparse. He checked the available pre-Ian documents—including a 2021 Condition Survey Report, which was entirely silent on any window or door damage. To an engineer, that silence made perfect sense: Irma simply lacked the muscle to inflict similar destruction.

    Analysis

    Steadfast protests that Jain did not see any reported damage to the windows and doors because that is not what the 2021 Condition Survey was looking for. According to Steadfast, the survey only inspected the exterior of the property, and since the interior was never examined, the report could not have identified any fenestration damage. Apparently, this was corroborated by the survey company, who testified that the 2021 assessment did not include an inspection of the buildings’ interiors. While that may certainly weaken Jain’s opinions, it did not change the reliability analysis here.

    The narrow question at this stage is simply whether Jain adequately grappled with obvious alternative explanations. He did. In his professional judgment, if Hurricane Irma had actually caused building-wide damage, the inspecting engineers would have written it down. Steadfast insists this is a total misreading of the 2021 Condition Survey. But that kind of disagreement goes to the credibility of his conclusion, not the reliability of his threshold method. If Steadfast wants to convince a jury that the report’s silence means something else entirely, it is welcome to try. That is exactly what cross-examination is for.

    B. Extrapolation

    Next up, Steadfast challenged Jain’s reliance on statistics instead of personally inspecting each unit to determine the percentage of damaged fenestrations. Basically, Steadfast argued that “extrapolating findings from only 27% of units to the entire 161-unit complex is not scientifically valid under accepted engineering Daubert principles.”

    Look at how Jain actually did the math. He didn’t invent a number out of whole cloth; he recorded the exact percentage of damage he saw in his sample and let those real-world findings dictate the building-wide projections. For example, he found that 24% of the sliding glass doors observed in the North Building had panel framing joint rotation, a bent or impacted frame, or water penetration through the joints.

    Because those specific flaws signal broken internal sealants and compromised framing, he concluded that 24% of the sliding glass doors in the North Building need to be replaced. The math is not a black box—it is the product of simple statistics. And Jain’s sampling focus is identical to his extrapolation subject: sliding glass doors, single-hung windows, and fixed windows divided by building and categorized by the type of damage each sustained. A reasonable jury does not have to accept Jain’s conclusions as true, but his math is not unreliable.

    Jain staggered the units he inspected across 19 stories, based on each unit’s location within each building. He did this “to cover a sufficiently large sample of units and windows and doors across the buildings and various exposures with multiple units on each floor and each stack of the buildings.” The ASCE guidelines support precisely this type of extrapolation. 

    Held

    In conclusion, the Court denied Steadfast Insurance Company’s motion in limine to exclude the testimony of Dr. Anurag Jain.

    Key Takeaway

    The Court’s job under Daubert is to screen an expert’s methodology, not to decide which side has the more persuasive argument or to declare who is ultimately correct.

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Riva Del Lago Condominium Association, Inc. V. Steadfast Insurance Company
    Docket Number: 2:24cv1056
    Court Name: United States District Court, Florida Middle
    Order Date: June 14, 2026
  • Construction Expert Conducted his own Inspections Before Signing the Estimate

    Construction Expert Conducted his own Inspections Before Signing the Estimate

    Plaintiffs, Monterrey’s Grill Inc. filed suit against the Defendant, Axis Surplus Insurance Company, alleging that the Defendant breached its obligations under the insurance policy by not paying a claim for hurricane damage to Plaintiff’s commercial building. During discovery, Plaintiff disclosed Emory “Les” Covan as its damages expert and produced a 44-page replacement cost value estimate signed by Covan.

    Axis Surplus Ins. Co. sought to exclude the testimony of Plaintiff’s retained damages expert witness, Covan.

    Construction Expert Witness

    Emory “Les” Covan is an estimator. He was retained to testify about the subject insurance claim, damages sustained as a result of the subject loss, costs of construction/necessary repairs and/or damages sustained by Plaintiff.

    Want to know more about the challenges Emory “Les” Covan has faced? Get the full details with our Challenge Study report.  

    Discussion by the Court

    Defendant filed a motion to strike Plaintiff’s damages expert, Emory “Les” Covan, under Daubert, arguing his estimate merely “parroted” the opinions of the expert who prepared the initial draft of the estimate. 

    In this case, Covan conducted his own inspections and reviewed pertinent documents before signing the estimate. He explained that he reviewed photographs of the damage to the insured property; he conducted a virtual inspection of the property using a three-dimensional video of the property; he reviewed engineering reports detailing the damages, moisture levels, and the recommended repairs to the property; and he relied on the Xactimate program for the costs included in the estimate.

    Moreover, for every line-item in the estimate that he was asked about during his deposition, Covan was able to explain the source of information (e.g., photograph, report, etc.) and reason for including that item in the estimate.

    Even though Covan did not prepare the initial draft of the estimate, the record shows that he did not simply adopt the initial draft of the estimate as his own without doing any additional work. 

    As a result, the Court concluded that the fact Covan did not know how the initial estimate was prepared or how, if at all, it differed from his estimate goes to the weight of the estimate, not its admissibility. Likewise, the fact that there were only minor differences between Covan’s estimate and the initial draft concerned the weight of the estimate, not its admissibility.

    Held

    The Court denied Axis Surplus’ motion to excliude the testimony of Emory “Les” Covan.

    Key Takeaway:

    An expert cannot “simply repeat or adopt the findings of another expert opinion without attempting to assess the validity of the opinions relied upon.” Thus, one expert cannot simply adopt the opinion of another expert as his own without conducting his own analysis.

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Monterrey’s Grill Inc. v. Axis Surplus Ins. Co.
    Docket Number: 3:23cv24580
    Court Name: United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, Pensacola Division
    Order Date: May 13, 2025
  • Insurance Adjuster Expert Witness’ Testimony Admitted Despite Methodological Deficiencies in Gathering Prices

    Insurance Adjuster Expert Witness’ Testimony Admitted Despite Methodological Deficiencies in Gathering Prices

    Plaintiff Ram Krishana Inc., a Louisiana business owned by Mukesh and Kailash Zaveri, operated as Motel 6 (“Hotel Property”) at 2022 Ruth Street, Sulphur, Louisiana. ANK Holdings, LLC, a Louisiana limited liability company with the same Mukesh and Kailash Zaveri as its only members, owned a restaurant (“Restaurant Property”) at an adjoining address.

    Defendant Mt. Hawley Insurance Company issued Ram Krishana an insurance policy covering both the Hotel and Restaurant Properties for the period from  June 27, 2020, to June 27, 2021.

    This case involves an insurance claim relating to alleged damages to Plaintiff’s hotel complex resulting from Hurricanes Laura and Delta, which occurred in August and October 2020, respectively.

    On July 12, 2024, Mt. Hawley filed a Daubert motion to exclude Plaintiff’s insurance adjuster expert witness, Jeffrey Major, from testifying on causation and amount of loss.

    Insurance Adjuster Expert Witness

    Jeffrey S. Major is a licensed public insurance adjuster in over 40 states and territories including being a licensed public adjuster and registered appraiser in the State of Louisiana and a licensed public adjuster in New York.

    He has been adjusting, substantiating and estimating property damage claims to repair and replace property for Reserve, Actual Cash Value (ACV), and Replacement Cost Value (RCV) purposes for over 30 years.

    He has estimated using the property damage estimating program Xactimate for over 18 years.

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

    Discussion by the Court

    Expert Report

    In his expert report, Major provided his estimate of damage to the Properties. He opined that Mt. Hawley improperly estimated damages, undervalued the claim, and failed to make proper actual cash value payments in a timely manner. Major estimated the actual cash value of the loss is $1,342,605.08. His expert report relied in part on estimates calculated in a software program called Xactimate.

     Xactimate supplies default prices, but users can, as Major did here, input prices themselves. 

    Mt. Hawley’s Arguments

    Mt. Hawley did not challenge Major’s qualifications. The Court reviewed Major’s training and experience and concluded that Major was qualified to testify about replacement cost valuation and insurance adjustment considering he has adjusted numerous insurance claims arising from hurricanes in the Louisiana area.

    Rather, Mt. Hawley argued that Major’s opinions were unsupported and unreliable based on the price inputs underlying his cost estimates using Xactimate. Mt. Hawley did not argue that Xactimate is an unreliable tool for cost estimation in the insurance industry and Ram Krishana cited several cases approving the use of this common software program. Instead, Mt. Hawley claimed that Major’s opinions are unreliable because the cost information that he purportedly entered into the Xactimate tool for some prices was based only on his general experience and no documentation or objective substantiation for those estimates was provided.

    Major had gathered prices from “actual builders who did the work in this event,” “invoices from contractors and their estimates,” invoices he reviewed, and interviews with contractors, as well as work he did as an adjuster on similar claims during the relevant period.

    Numerous courts have considered Daubert challenges to experts who used Xactimate, but deviated from the default prices or otherwise purportedly erred, and have found that such challenges go to the weight to give an expert’s opinions, not the admissibility of their testimony. 

    La Gorce

    Mt. Hawley cited La Gorce Palace Condominium Ass’n, Inc. v. Blackboard Specialty Insurance Co., 586 F. Supp. 3d 1300 (S.D. Fla. 2022) in support of Major’s exclusion. However, the Court found the case distinguishable from the matter at hand.

    In that case, which involved a jury trial, the Court excluded the testimony of an expert who used Xactimate. Like Major, that expert input at least some of his own costs. However, the expert in La Gorce could not describe the methodology he relied on for calculating input values, did not explain an intelligible process for identifying which damages he deemed to preexist the hurricane nor even identify the damages he excluded on this basis, and could not provide any measurements associated with his estimated costs. The Court also questioned how the expert determined the cost of repair for such a large property over just two days. 

    In the present case, however, Major identified the particular prices that he independently input into Xactimate. He explained that the costs came from builders who did work in the storm that damaged Plaintiff’s property and his own experience in adjusting similar claims. While Major apparently did not have any documentation to support his estimates, deficiencies in his methodology for gathering prices did not reach the level of the methodological deficiencies in La Gorce, in which the expert could not explain how he gathered data or formed his damage estimations. Also, the expert testimony in La Gorce would have been presented to a jury rather than to the Court in a bench trial, as here.

    Analysis

    Hawley may well have strong cross-examination fodder based on the fact that Major has not produced records or written substantiation of the estimates that he included that were based on his expertise and experience. Such critiques will be closely scrutinized by the Court in determining the weight, if any, to afford Major’s opinions.

    Given that this case is set to be tried to the bench, unless the disputed evidence is wholly irrelevant or so speculative as to have no probative value, it is appropriate for the Court to take in the evidence freely and separate helpful conclusions from ones that are not grounded in reliable methodology.

    Held

    The Court denied Mt. Hawley’s Daubert motion to exclude the testimony of Plaintiff’s insurance adjuster expert witness, Jeffrey Major.

    Key Takeaway:

    The Court held that Major sufficiently explained his methodology and established its reliability, despite the apparent lack of documentation to support his estimates. Major identified the particular prices that he independently input into Xactimate and explained that the costs came from builders who did work in the storm that damaged Plaintiff’s property and his own experience in adjusting similar claims.

    Major did not produce records or written substantiation of the estimates that he included but the Court still refused to entirely exclude Major’s testimony.

    Case Details:

    Case caption: Ram Krishana Inc. v. Mt. Hawley Ins. Co.
    Docket Number: 1:22cv3803
    Court: United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
    Date: February 3, 2025
  • Building and Construction Expert Witness’ Hurricane Damage Assessment Does Not Warrant Exclusion

    Building and Construction Expert Witness’ Hurricane Damage Assessment Does Not Warrant Exclusion

    It all started when Hurricanes Laura and Delta inflicted significant damage on Plaintiffs’ rental property on August 27, 2020, and October 9, 2020, respectively. Southern Fidelity Insurance Company (SFIC) insured the property at the time of the damage. However, SFIC subsequently declared bankruptcy, and the Louisiana Insurance Guaranty Association (“LIGA”) has since been substituted as the proper party.

    Plaintiffs claimed that the damage to their property had been undervalued. After LIGA was substituted for SFIC, LIGA retained Keystone to inspect the property. Plaintiffs then moved to exclude LIGA’s expert, Daniel Treas, claiming that his report was unreliable.

    Building and Construction Expert Witness

    Daniel Treas has over 15 years experience as a Construction Superintendent and in commercial construction, including 8 years in renovation and 5 years in project management. He has over 10 years experience in OSHA regulations. He has also served as an independent insurance adjuster with over 14 years of experience.

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

    Discussion by the Court

    Plaintiffs argued that Treas’ report was unreliable due to his failure to physically inspect the property and conduct a thorough review of the previous expert’s report. Furthermore, they pointed out discrepancies in the report and claimed that it was nearly identical to an earlier report prepared by the previous expert. According to the Plaintiffs, Keystone initially sent a building consultant, along with its engineer, to inspect the property on August 25, 2023. The building consultant authored a report dated September 15, 2023, but left Keystone shortly thereafter.

    Subsequently, Keystone hired Treas to prepare a report to support its estimate of damages caused by Hurricanes Laura and Delta.  

    The Plaintiffs complained that: (1) the Treas report is identical to the previous expert report, (2) Treas is not a licensed adjuster, (3) Treas did not personally inspect the property, and (4) Treas was not involved in this matter until July 2024. Moreover, they identified discrepancies between the two reports, such as a missing fan on the rear elevation porch, the type of exterior cladding on the house, and the wrong address noted in the report. Additionally, they contended that Treas improperly opined on causation.

    Treas is not a licensed adjuster

    In response, LIGA defended Treas’ qualifications, citing his extensive experience in various construction roles, including the estimator and catastrophe claims adjuster. LIGA explained that Treas relied on Keystone’s engineer regarding causation in order to prepare an estimate to rebuild the property.

    Treas report is identical to the previous expert report

    Regarding the similarity between the reports, LIGA noted that Treas testified the first 12 pages should be the same because they list the background information about the property. However, several differences exist between the reports, including additional damages not mentioned in the previous expert’s report, as well as overall discrepancies in the estimated damages.

    Ultimately, the Court did not find that exclusion was warranted simply because the two reports were very similar. As to the discrepancies, the Court found that this will go to the credibility of the witness and his report. The Court further noted that the instant matter is a bench trial, and Plaintiffs will be able to cross-examine and rebut LIGA’s report and Treas’ testimony. 

    Held

    The Court denied the Plaintiffs’ motion to exclude the expert testimony of Daniel Treas.

    Key Takeaway:

    According to Federal Rule of Evidence 402, evidence is generally admissible so long as it is relevant and not barred by the Constitution, a federal statute, the Federal Rules of Evidence, or other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court. Evidence should only be excluded in limine where it is “clearly inadmissible on all potential grounds.”

    The Court determined that the similarity between expert reports alone does not justify exclusion. It emphasized that any discrepancies identified concerned the credibility of the witness rather than the admissibility of the evidence. In a bench trial setting, Plaintiffs retain the opportunity to effectively cross-examine the expert. They can also challenge the opposing party’s findings. This underscores the importance of witness credibility in evaluating expert testimony.

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Houston et al vs. Southern Fidelity Insurance Co.
    Docket Number:  2:22-CV-01198
    Court: United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Lake Charles Division
    Order Date: October 1, 2024