To be clear, the court in Travelers Cas. Ins. v. Lmid, Inc., No. 24-1022 (C.D. Calif. April 18, 2025) did not say that the insured’s coverage lawyer-experts, hired to testify that Travelers’s coverage determination was wrong (and that certain allegations in a design defect complaint did in fact establish an “occurrence” and “property damage”) were not qualified to say so.

Travelers sought the experts disqualification on two grounds.  The court rejected the first one but disqualified them based on the second.

On the first one, Travelers argued that the experts could not testify to insurance industry standards because they never worked in the insurance industry.  This the court rejected, on the basis that, “[w]hether an individual qualifies as an expert depends on his background, knowledge, and experience” and the fact that the experts “are attorneys does not mean that they could not have acquired the requisite expertise to testify about insurance industry standards.”

However, while the experts were qualified, their opinions, the court concluded, would be of an impermissible subject matter.  As the court saw it, the experts were providing “legal opinions disguised as industry standards.”  In essence, their reports were legal briefs, where one expert wrote that the insured’s alleged conduct constituted an “occurrence” covered by the policy because “[i]ndustry standards recognize an accident where the act causes an injury even if the recommendation was intentional [where the consequent damage is] not intended and is unexpected.”  In support, the expert report analyzed several cases and argued that coverage was owed.

The insured, facing this judicial push-back, was willing to have the experts excise any references to case law from their opinions.  This, however, was not curative.  In the end, it came down to this – the experts were attempting to do the court’s job:

“In short, the parties do not dispute that the Court will be the trier of fact in this case and that the ultimate issues of contract interpretation (i.e., whether the claims against LMID fall within the scope of the policy) are for the Court to decide.” The court continued that the experts reports “engage in legal analysis, assessing cases and industry materials and applying the law to the facts of this case. In doing so, Defendants have not demonstrated that is it more likely than not that the experts’ knowledge ‘will help the [Court] to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.’”