Expert Witness Profiler

Tag: Reputation

  • Public Relations Expert’s Testimony on Negative Publicity Admitted

    Public Relations Expert’s Testimony on Negative Publicity Admitted

    This case arises out of the tragic murder of four University of Idaho students in November 2022. Plaintiff Rebecca Scofield is a professor at the University of Idaho. She alleged that, despite never meeting any of these students or being involved with their murders in any way, Defendant Ashley Guillard posted numerous TikTok (and later YouTube) videos falsely claiming that Plaintiff (i) had an extramarital, same-sex, romantic affair with one of the victims; and then (ii) ordered the four murders to prevent the affair from coming to light.

    Plaintiff sent cease-and-desist letters to Defendant in the following days and weeks. When Defendant did not stop, Plaintiff initiated this action. Plaintiff asserts two defamation claims against Defendant: one is premised upon the false statements regarding Plaintiff’s involvement with the murders themselves, the other is premised upon the false statement regarding Plaintiff’s romantic relationship with one of the murdered students.

    Plaintiff has identified two experts who may testify at trial: Dr. Rebecca Tallent and Rebecca Bohn. In advance of trial, Defendant filed a motion to exclude these experts’ testimony pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702.

    Public Relations Expert Witness

    Rebecca J. Tallent is a retired associate professor emerita with more than five decades of experience in journalism, public relations, and academia. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism, a master’s degree in education with a journalism emphasis, and a doctorate in education focused on higher education, classroom teaching, and mass communications.

    During her career, Tallent taught public relations and journalism at the University of Idaho and other institutions, published scholarly and professional works on media and ethics, and worked professionally in journalism and public relations.

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

    Mental Health Expert Witness

    Rebecca Bohn is a licensed mental health counselor with a Master of Arts degree in counseling psychology and more than three decades of experience providing psychotherapy and behavioral health treatment.

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

    Discussion by the Court

    Rebecca Tallent

    Tallent offered opinions concerning how defamatory statements made via social medial can affect an individual’s professional reputation in an academic setting. She specifically opined that Defendant’s statements have damaged Plaintiff’s reputation to a significant degree and that it could take decades, or even a generation, for Plaintiff to restore her reputation, if ever.

    Defendant argued that Tallent is not qualified to offer these opinions and that her testimony is unreliable because it is speculative, exaggerated, and unsupported by facts or data tied to Plaintiff’s actual circumstances.

    The Court held that Tallent’s education, training, and extensive professional experience in journalism, public relations, and academia qualify her to testify as an expert regarding general principles of reputation, branding, and the ways in which negative publicity — particularly online — can impact professionals in academic environments. 

    Tallent’s testimony is also relevant. Testimony explaining how reputational harm can occur, how internet-based dissemination differs from traditional media, and how academics may be uniquely vulnerable to reputational injury may assist the trier of fact in understanding issues beyond the knowledge of a lay juror.

    However, much of Tallent’s report is framed in conditional or probabilistic terms, such as statements that Defendant’s conduct “ha[s] the capacity” to affect Plaintiff’s reputation or “may cause” harm. Such phrasing underscores the speculative nature of her conclusions and highlights the absence of a reliable basis for opining that reputational harm has in fact occurred, or will occur, to any particular degree. Given the significant weight juries may place on expert testimony, Rule 702 requires more than unsupported statements grounded solely in the expert’s authority. Without a reliable foundation demonstrating how Tallent reached her conclusions about the existence, severity, or duration of Plaintiff’s reputational harm, those opinions risk misleading the jury.

    Rebecca Bohn

    Bohn began treating Plaintiff in May 2023 and has met with her regularly since that time. Based on her training, clinical experience, and longitudinal treatment of Plaintiff, Bohn diagnosed Plaintiff with post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) and opined that Plaintiff will require ongoing mental health treatment into the future.

    Based on her training, clinical experience, and longitudinal treatment of Plaintiff, Bohn diagnosed Plaintiff with post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) and opined that Plaintiff will require ongoing mental health treatment into the future.

    Defendant argued that Bohn is not qualified to diagnose PTSD, that her opinions are unreliable because they allegedly depart from the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, and that defamation cannot, as a matter of law or medicine, constitute a qualifying traumatic event.

    The Court disagreed and concluded that Bohn is qualified to testify and that Defendant’s challenges go to the weight of her testimony, not its admissibility. Moreover, testimony regarding Plaintiff’s mental health diagnosis, symptoms, treatment history, and prognosis may assist the jury in understanding the nature and scope of the claimed injury and in determining damages, if any. Accordingly, Bohn’s testimony satisfies Rule 702’s relevance requirement.

    The Court additionally found Bohn’s testimony sufficiently reliable. As a psychotherapist, licensed mental health counselor, and behavior health educator, she is uniquely qualified to diagnose patients with mental impairments, including PTSD. Defendant’s unsupported argument that defamation cannot constitute a traumatic triggering event sufficient to support a PTSD diagnosis is ultimately a dispute over diagnostic criteria and causation.

    Held

    The Court granted in part and denied in part the Defendant’s motion to exclude the expert testimony and evidence of Rebecca Bohn and Rebecca Tallent.

    Key Takeaway

     Unlike an expert retained solely for litigation, Bohn’s opinions are premised upon a course of treatment, repeated clinical evaluations, and an ongoing relationship with Plaintiff. Courts recognize that such medical care provides a reliable basis for diagnostic opinions. 

    Whether Plaintiff’s experience satisfies the clinical requirements for PTSD are matters on which mental health professions may (or may not) disagree. Such disagreements are appropriately explored through cross-examination and, if Defendant chooses, competing expert testimony. They do not, however, render Bohn’s opinions unreliable for purposes of Rule 702. This is because courts routinely allow expert testimony linking psychological conditions to tortious conduct, including defamation.

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Scofield V. Guillard
    Docket Number: 3:22cv521
    Court Name: United States District Court, Idaho
    Order Date: January 23, 2026
  • Defamation Expert’s Testimony on Economic Damages Excluded

    Defamation Expert’s Testimony on Economic Damages Excluded

    Plaintiff Brian Menge, a former police detective with the City of Highland Park, Michigan, brought a claim against Defendant Khursheed Ash-Shafii, a Highland Park city councilman, alleging that Ash-Shafii unlawfully retaliated against him in violation of the First Amendment because of Menge’s successful settlement of a prior lawsuit against the City. The retaliation consisted of statements published by Ash-Shafii falsely accusing Menge of stealing money from the City’s criminal forfeiture fund while Menge was a police officer there. Menge retained Sameer Somal, to testify to the amount of damages Menge incurred to his income, reputation, and psyche as a result of Ash-Shafii’s false statements.

    The Defendant filed a motion to exclude Somal’s testimony arguing that Somal did not meet the requirements of Rule 702.

    Defamation Expert Witness

    Sameer Singh Somal CFA, CFP®, CAIA is a CFA Charterholder, a CFP® professional, and a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst. He is the CEO of Blue Ocean Global Technology, a company that assists individuals and entities with building and repairing their online reputation. He has co-authored Continuing Legal Education (CLE) programs about defamation and related topics and is a former member of the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) and the Education Advisory Council (EAC).

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

    Discussion by the Court

    Somal opined that Menge suffered “significant” damages based on Defendant Ash-Shafii’s alleged retaliatory statements. Somal separated the damages into four categories: economic, rehabilitative, reputational, and emotional distress. He determined that Menge suffered at least $283,500 in economic damages.

    Economic Damages

    Ash-Shafii objected first to Somal’s assessment of Menge’s economic damages of $283,500. Somal opined that Menge was entitled to economic damages in that amount based on Somal’s own “conservative estimate” that he lost the opportunity to work over the next three years with between eight and ten attorneys. He reckoned that each of these attorneys would have retained Menge for at least six to eight projects per year for an average of $1,000 per project. Ash-Shafii asserted that this testimony is unreliable because it strays from the facts of the case. He asserted that Somal failed to review certain “Request for Payment” forms that are submitted in indigent criminal cases to obtain payment for Menge’s work on an investigation and did not review Menge’s 2023 tax return.

    While these points may all be grounds for impeachment, the Court held that they do not necessarily fatally undermine the admissibility of Somal’s testimony.

    The problems with Somal’s testimony are more basic. For one, Somal did not appear to be assessing the economic damage to Menge’s investigation business based on any independent body of expertise — that is, based on any knowledge of the legal field in the metro Detroit region. He did not offer any foundation for innate or acquired knowledge of the practices for assignment or retention of investigators in indigent criminal defense cases or the networking customs among defense attorneys. Instead, his conclusions ultimately were based on “estimate[s]” of Menge’s lost work, which he deemed “conservative.” He projected that Menge lost the opportunity to work with between eight and ten attorneys per year, but the source of this estimate is entirely unexplained and does not correspond with any evidence in the record.

    Rehabilitation Damages

    Ash-Shafii next asserted that Somal offered no methodology for his opinion that a twelve-to-eighteen-month rehabilitation campaign, costing approximately $180,000, will be necessary to rehabilitate Menge’s online reputation. He pointed out that the recording of the City Council meeting containing the offending comments only has been viewed approximately 300 times on Facebook, and Somal never searched for references to Menge on Google to determine the extent of the spread of the alleged defamatory statements on the internet.

    However, Ash-Shafii did not appear to take issue with Somal’s qualifications as an expert in the field of online reputation management, and Somal’s report contains a sufficiently clear basis for his $180,000 estimate. He explained that his team would have to conduct ongoing analysis and testing on important “keywords” related to Menge, and as part of their work to rehabilitate his reputation, the team would create “backlinks” — apparently prioritized by search engine algorithms — to more prominently highlight certain favorable results. In his report he quoted a cost of $15,000 a month for twelve months for these tasks. While this number may well be excessive, the Court held that Somal, by dint of his knowledge of the field, is qualified to offer his view.

    While Ash-Shafii faults Somal for failing to assess the extent of the spread of the defamatory content before coming up with this estimate, it did not appear that the amount of work necessary to address harmful online content is dependent on the volume of material circulating on the internet. Moreover, Somal did opine that it was problematic that the alleged defamatory video still was published to Facebook and explained that the fact court documents mentioning the defamatory statement were readily accessible on the internet “adds another layer of complexity to the rehabilitation process.”

    Reputational Damages

    Ash-Shafii also took issue with Somal’s conclusion that Menge is entitled to $550,000 to $750,000 in damages based on more generalized harm to his reputation.

    In his report, Somal stated that “there is no set standard to determine the actual value associated with [reputational damages]” and that calculating damages in this area “is subjective.” He then explained that in his experience, a “solid structure” for assessing damages would consider three “rings”: Menge’s immediate contacts, his prospective contacts, and strangers.

    “Adding the three reputational rings together,” he “calculated and estimated that damages” totaled to “no less than $550,000 – $750,000.” How he calculated a value for each ring is not explained, and his deposition does not shed much further light, but it appeared that the figures may be based on his review of damages awards in other defamation cases.

    The Court held that this opinion suffers from the twin faults of no stated methodology and no factual tether.

    Held

    The Court granted in part and denied in part the Defendant’s motion to exclude testimony of Sameer Somal.

    Key Takeaway:

    Rule 702 requires an expert to articulate some methodological basis before he may present his testimony to a jury. And his work must bear some relation to the facts of the case. The danger of allowing Somal’s opinion based on his calculations is that it could suggest to the jury damages that do not in fact exist.

    Moreover, with proper foundation, calculating Menge’s economic damages would not necessarily even require expert testimony. Trial witnesses could testify about the effects of Ash-Shafii’s defamation on Menge’s businesses and his attorney can develop testimony about the size of his business and the comparative reduction in revenue.

    Case Details:

    Case Caption: Menge V. Shafii Et Al
    Docket Number: 2:23cv11339
    Court Name: United States District Court, Michigan Eastern
    Order Date: July 22, 2025