I was listening to a recording of a recent Federal Circuit oral argument where one of the advocates mentioned that a PWC study reports that forty-four percent of all financial expert reports are excluded under Daubert. Quite an interesting statistic. PWC notes:
- 44% of financial experts were excluded in 2015. This is consistent with the 16-year average.
- Across the 16-year timespan, the most common reason for financial expert exclusions has been lack of reliability. Exclusion rates have been highest in intellectual property and product liability cases.
- Testimony “based on sufficient facts or data” is a common stumbling block for financial experts and is the most frequent reason for reliability exclusions.
- In 2015, accountants faced the highest number of challenges and experienced the highest exclusion rate.
- In a majority of cases (78%), appellate courts agree with lower court Daubert rulings on financial experts.
Here’s a link to the PWC study: [Link].