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Portion of Expert's Lost Development Deals Damages Ruled Too Speculative

By Stan Soocher
May 27, 2010

A magistrate for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has excluded a significant portion of an expert's damages testimony in a suit by book author Michael Baisden alleging that the defendants exceeded the scope of a license to produce stageplays of Baisden's novels The Maintenance Man and Men Cry in the Dark. Baisden v. I'm Ready Productions Inc., 4:08-CV-00451. Baisden's suit included claims of copyright infringement and failure to pay royalties from DVD releases of the stage productions.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy K. Johnson first decided that Baisden's damages expert Scott A. Barnes, a certified public accountant, qualified as an expert under Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, by noting: “Although Barnes lacks any specific training and has limited experience in the valuation of feature films, he possesses a significant amount of experience generally in the valuation of businesses and other commercial ventures and specifically in damage assessment related to intellectual property infringement.”

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