![]() An Easement and Right-of-Way over 6.09 Acres of Land, More or Less, in Madison County, Alabama, 140 F. 10, 2013).Ī property or business owner may also testify as to the value of the property or projected profits of the business without qualifying as an expert. By contrast, a contractor could testify as to the amount of damage to a home because that calculation process “is the bread and butter of contractors and others in the business of repairing and remodeling real property.” Encompass Ins. The “employment experience” of a maintenance supervisor does not necessarily qualify the supervisor to opine as to the cause of an accident or the design defect in an aerial lift. This is distinct from an expert opinion, which “results from a reasoning process which can only be mastered by experts in the field.” Id. ![]() 701 advisory committee’s note to 2000 amendments. Moreover, a lay witness must arrive at his or her opinion through a “process of reasoning familiar in everyday life.” Fed. However, he could not testify as to “sound banking practices in the abstract” without first qualifying as an expert. The inspector could draw specific conclusions from his work on those examinations as a lay witness. In Riddle, an inspector from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had examined the defendant’s bank on two occasions. Even if a witness has firsthand experience, that witness may not go beyond “straightforward conclusions” from those observations. For example, a corporate officer cannot opine on a company’s value when it did not come from his or her own particularized knowledge but rather from facts learned in discovery and from the opinions of an expert retained for the litigation. Experts, on the contrary, may opine in response to hypothetical questions. The source of lay opinion testimony must be personal, firsthand perception. 1995)).īut what separates “prototypical” lay opinion testimony under Rule 701 from the heightened scrutiny of Rule 702? Courts often look to three factors: the source of the witness’s knowledge the process used to arrive at his or her opinion and, in specific contexts, the identity of the person providing the opinion. 701 advisory committee’s note to 2000 amendments (citing Asplundh Mfg. The 2000 amendment added subsection (c), which limited such testimony to opinions “not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.” The advisory committee sought to prevent evasion of Rule 702 requirements while preserving the “prototypical” examples of lay opinion testimony, such as the “appearance of persons or things, identity, the manner of conduct, competency of a person, degrees of light or darkness, sound, size, weight, distance, and an endless number of items that cannot be described factually in words apart from inferences.” Fed. Before its amendment in 2000, Rule 701 provided: If the witness is not testifying as an expert, the witness’ testimony in the form of opinions or inferences is limited to those opinions or inferences which are (a) rationally based on the perception of the witness, and (b) helpful to a clear understanding of the witness’ testimony or the determination of a fact in issue. This tension led to the adoption of Rule 701. He is telling the ‘facts’ in the only way that he knows how, and the result of nagging and checking him is often to choke him altogether, which is, indeed, usually its purpose.Ĭent. Judge Learned Hand, among others, criticized this prohibition as unrealistic: Every judge of experience in the trial of causes has again and again seen the whole story garbled, because of insistence upon a form with which the witness cannot comply, since, like most men, he is unaware of the extent to which inference enters into his perceptions. ![]() At common law, courts restricted lay opinions.
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