Combating — continued from Page 28
Defendants will claim it is permissible
for them to speculate regarding possible alternative causes of injury because they have hired an expert to do the speculat- ing. However, experts are not granted a license to speculate. As the court wrote in Jennings v. Palomar Pomerado Health Systems, Inc. (2003) 114 Cal.App.4th 1108, 1120 [8 Cal.Rptr.3d 363 ] an expert opinion that states, “in essence ‘Trust me, I’m an expert, and it makes sense to me’ has pro- vided no grist for the jury’s decisional mill. Instead, such a conclusion leaves to the jury only a weighing of the curricula vitae of the opposing experts. We are con- vinced the expert must provide some articulation of how the jury, if it possessed his or her training and knowledge and employed it to examine the known facts,
would reach the same conclusion as the expert.” (Ibid.) If a defense expert has no reliable
basis for their opinions, these opinions are worthless and inadmissible. Evidence Code section 801 limits expert opinions that rely on matters that provide a rea- sonable basis for the particular opinion offered, and that an expert opinion based on speculation or conjecture is inadmissible. (In re Lockheed Litigation Cases (2004) 115 Cal.App.4th 558, 564. [10 Cal.Rptr.3d 34].) The value of opin- ion evidence rests not in the conclusion reached, but in the factors considered and the reasoning employed. Where an expert bases his conclusion upon possibil- ities and assumptions which are not sup- ported by the record, upon matters
which are not reasonably relied upon by other experts, or upon factors which are speculative, remote or conjectural, then his conclusion has no evidentiary value. (Id. at 563.) An expert opinion that does not have
an adequate factual basis does not consti- tute admissible evidence. (Carmel Valley View, Ltd. v. Board of Supervisors (1976) 58 Cal.App.3d 817, 822 [130 Cal.Rptr. 249].) The law is abundantly clear that an expert opinion rendered without a reasoned explanation of why the underlying facts lead to the ultimate conclusion has no evi- dentiary value because an expert opinion is worth no more than the reasons and facts on which it is based. (Bushling v. Fremont Medical Center, 117 Cal.App.4th at p. 510.) Even if a witness qualifies as an expert, that
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