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President of Company Not Qualified to Testify Based on Industry Experience

President of Company Not Qualified to Testify Based on Industry Experience
Monday, October 1, 2012

When assessing whether an expert is qualified, courts continue to look at the expert's specific qualifications to give the offered opinion. Experience in the industry is not always sufficient. In Calder v. Blitz USA, 2010 WL 4386913 (D. UT 2010), the President of a plastic portable gasoline container manufacturer, who had decades of experience in the gas container industry, was not qualified to testify that flashback caused the explosion that was the subject of the lawsuit. He was not a scientist nor a fire investigator. He had personally not performed any testing that would simulate the conditions of the accident. Therefore, the court excluded his testimony.

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