On September 19, 2018, Nevada’s First Judicial District Court in Carson City granted a motion prepared by Taylor Anderson attorneys Brent Anderson and Andrew Orr to exclude an accident reconstruction expert retained by the plaintiff. The matter is captioned Angel v. Brabender, et al., No. 17 TRT 00049 and is before the Honorable James Wilson.
Having declined to adopt either the Daubert or Frye standards, Nevada is widely viewed as a jurisdiction with a liberal approach to the admissibility of expert testimony. In their briefing, Anderson and Orr argued that the expert’s opinion was based entirely on conjecture and his own anecdotal experience, rather than any methodology that would satisfy even Nevada’s more liberal Hallmark standard.
Ruling on the papers, the court adopted that reasoning in full. In particular, Judge Wilson held that the expert’s “opinions [were] unhelpful to the trier of fact,” and that “allowing them to be presented to the jury would be unduly prejudicial to Defendants.” The court went on to exclude the expert’s opinions “in their entirety.”
While a single trial court opinion does not provide reason to believe the law in Nevada is changing, it is a helpful reminder that even a liberal approach has its limits.