WITNESSVetted
Sample dossier — forensic economics

The court record behind Dr. Stan V. SmithDr. Stan V. Smith, President, Smith Economics Group, Ltd., Chicago, IL — forensic economics: economic damages, hedonic damages / loss of enjoyment of life.Compiled from published opinions and publicly filed documents located in the sources searched, as of October 26, 2026.Public records only. No non-public source was used; no one was contacted; nothing was purchased.What this page is: the WitnessVetted sample dossier for this expert, presented in full on this page — every ruling we opened and read, each cited to its opinion, with the credential checks, the disciplinary check, the pattern note, and the scope stated at the level the sources support.

The rulingsShown in chronological order. Every outcome is scoped to the testimony that was challenged in that matter: an exclusion is not a ruling on the outcome of the case, and it says nothing about testimony that was not challenged.Mercado v. Ahmed — U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit, 1992
Challenged: testimony valuing Brian Mercado's lost pleasure of living ($2,207,827–$2,762,227 on his method).
Outcome: Excluded in full as to the challenged testimony at trial; the exclusion was affirmed on appeal. The trial court held the method was not the kind of specialised knowledge Rule 702 contemplates and lacked basic agreement among economists; the Seventh Circuit held barring it "was not reversible error."
OpinionSullivan v. United States Gypsum Co. — U.S. District Court, District of Kansas, 1994
Challenged: hedonic-damages testimony — loss of enjoyment of life calculated at $1,410,001 and $1,027,883 from willingness-to-pay studies, taking no account of the specific facts of Mrs. Sullivan's life.
Outcome: Excluded in full as to the challenged testimony. The court held the damages category is not recognised under Kansas law and that the method was not scientifically valid for that purpose.
OpinionAyers v. Robinson — U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois, 1995
Challenged: hedonic-damages testimony putting Lenardo Robinson's hedonic damages at approximately $2 million, on the willingness-to-pay approach from his co-authored book.
Outcome: Excluded in full as to the challenged testimony. "All five principal parts of Smith's proposed testimony on the issue of hedonic damages are inadmissible under Rule 702 or Rule 403 or both. Defendants' motion to exclude the testimony is granted in its entirety."
OpinionSmith v. Ingersoll-Rand Co. — U.S. Court of Appeals, 10th Circuit, 2000
Challenged: testimony quantifying Ron Smith's hedonic damages at $1,742,514–$2,323,411. (The plaintiffs share the expert's surname; they are not the expert.)
Outcome: Excluded in part as to the challenged testimony. The district court excluded the quantification and admitted testimony explaining the meaning of hedonic damages. The Tenth Circuit upheld the admission of the explanation and expressly declined to decide the admissibility of the quantification studies — it did not affirm the exclusion.
OpinionBailey v. Nyloncraft, Inc. — U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, 2012 (No. 11-14199)
Challenged: testimony measuring loss of society/companionship to Jane Bailey's family from a value-of-life figure (loss figures of $2,073,009 to $8,691,090).
Outcome: Excluded in full as to the challenged loss-of-society/companionship testimony, held "inadmissible because it is irrelevant and unreliable."
OpinionPassmore v. Barrett, Jr., et al. — U.S. District Court, Northern District of Indiana, 2015 (No. 2:13-cv-290, Opinion and Order at Doc. 82)
Challenged: a motion to bar all of Smith's opinion testimony. As originally proposed, the testimony covered four categories: loss of wages and employee benefits; household/family services (housekeeping and household management; advice, counsel, guidance, instruction and training; and accompaniment); loss of the value of life (hedonic); and loss of society or relationship.
Outcome: Motion denied after proponent narrowed proposed testimony. Before any ruling, the plaintiff agreed to limit the testimony to loss of wages and employee benefits and household housekeeping/management services. The loss-of-value-of-life (hedonic) and loss-of-society categories — and the advice/counsel/guidance and accompaniment components of household/family services — were withdrawn by agreement and were not judicially excluded; no court in this matter ruled on a challenge to the hedonic testimony as originally proposed. The court held the two remaining categories recoverable under the statute, held the defendant's late Rule 702 argument waived, and, alternatively, found the narrowed testimony reliable: "the Motion to Bar Opinion Testimony from Stan Smith [DE 60] is DENIED." The denial is not an unqualified admission: it covers only the narrowed testimony.
OpinionGlisson v. Correctional Medical Services, Inc. — U.S. District Court, Southern District of Indiana, 2018 (No. 1:12-cv-01418)
Challenged: hedonic-damages testimony valuing Nicholas Glisson's loss of enjoyment of life at up to $3,371,253, built on the average value of a statistical life rather than facts particular to his life.
Outcome: Excluded in full as to the challenged hedonic-damages testimony, held "both unreliable and unlikely to assist the jury." The underlying loss-of-enjoyment damages element itself remained claimable without his testimony.
OpinionDo et al v. Blessing Hospital et al — U.S. District Court, Central District of Illinois, 2025 (No. 1:20-cv-01398, Opinion at Doc. 294, Sept. 23, 2025)
Challenged: all of Smith's opinion testimony in a medical-negligence case except his present-value-of-future-life-care opinion, which the motion did not challenge. The court ruled category by category:
• Housekeeping and household-management services — admitted. His $378,775 calculation stood: based on objective information and statistics, and subject to vigorous cross-examination.
• Advice, counsel, guidance, instruction, and training services — excluded ($147,162), as inherently personal and speculative on the facts presented.
• Hedonic damages — excluded. A ~$5.9 million value of life reduced by a self-selected 50% or 80% impairment rating, with no medical professional consulted; held not reliable and not helpful to the jury.
• Loss of society — excluded ($403,273), as speculative and potentially misleading in focusing on the statistically average person instead of the individuals in the case.
• Present value of future life care — not challenged, and not ruled on.
Outcome: Excluded in part as to the challenged testimony — the motion was granted in part and denied in part.
OpinionCoverage: 8 opinions opened and read in full, 1992–2025, 8 courts — 5 excluded in full as to the challenged testimony · 2 excluded in part · 1 motion denied after proponent narrowed proposed testimony · 0 admitted without exclusion. Counted only from opinions opened and read.What a directory profile does not surfaceThe Ph.D. timing check. His CV dates the Ph.D. to 1997. That date is corroborated by bibliographic and court records (the published abstract of his dissertation, Journal of Forensic Economics, 1998; a Rutgers University Libraries index entry; the Glisson and Passmore orders); university conferral record not obtained — no University of Chicago registrar/catalogue record, and no ProQuest/WorldCat dissertation record, was located in public searches. The earliest ruling above, Mercado (1992), describes him at that time as holding a master's degree only — consistent with the 1997 date, and a fact a reader can establish only by comparing the opinion to the CV.The vacated quotation. His firm site quotes a 1987 Seventh Circuit panel statement in Sherrod v. Berry calling his testimony "invaluable to the jury." The Ayers opinion records that the panel opinion was vacated and the case reversed on other grounds on en banc rehearing — and that the en banc court directed the district court on remand to consider the earlier discussion, including the vacated panel opinion. The quotation's status is therefore less clear-cut than a simple vacatur; the dossier records both facts together, as the opinion gives them.A degree discrepancy, documented — not resolved. Degree-designation discrepancy: profile states B.A.; linked CV states B.S. Actual award designation not independently verified. The JurisPro profile lists "B.A. Cornell University"; the CV linked from that profile environment states "Bachelor of Science, Operations Research, 1968" from Cornell. The Glisson order records an undergraduate degree from Cornell University; it does not state the degree designation. The dossier therefore records a discrepancy between two documents, not a finding about which designation Cornell awarded.Credentials and checks — printed at the level actually reachedThe dossier keeps three levels distinct throughout: bibliographic corroboration (a journal/library record establishing that an item was published or indexed as stated — not independent attestation of assertions in a text the subject authored), court recitation (what a court stated), and institutional verification (a record of the awarding institution itself). Items are printed at the level reached — never smoothed over, never upgraded.• Ph.D. and dissertation — corroborated by bibliographic and court records; university conferral record not obtained (see the timing check, above). The dissertation ('Jury Verdicts in Drunken Driving Cases,' University of Chicago, 1997, 173 pp.) is indexed in the Rutgers University Libraries Alcohol Studies Database and abstracted in the Journal of Forensic Economics 11(1) (1998).
• Master's degree — institution and character rest on court recitation (Mercado; Glisson). The year (1972) and concentration rest on his CV.
• Cornell undergraduate degree — institution rests on court recitation (Glisson). The designation (B.S.), year (1968), and field (Operations Research) rest on his CV — see the degree discrepancy, above.
• DePaul teaching (1990–1994) — court recitation in an opened order (Passmore, Doc. 82). No DePaul University record of the appointment was located; the appointment is not presented as institutionally verified.
• Printed as searched–not found (searched October 26, 2026; no corroborating source located): Ph.D. support areas and thesis advisor; ABDA Diplomate status; ACFEI Fellow/Diplomate status; arbitrator panels; the 1970–73 University of Chicago roles; journal and association roles.
• Printed as not checked (no check performed): pre-forensic employment; the balance of the CV publications list.
• Printed as self-reported — not independently verified: the claim that his DePaul course was the first of its kind nationwide.Disciplinary & adverse-record check. Performed October 26, 2026 (court-sanctions reporting across web, CourtListener, and Scholar-indexed sources; the NAFE website; news coverage). No public disciplinary or sanctions record was located in the sources searched. No relevant professional license was identified in the materials reviewed; no licensing-board clearance is represented. A located-nothing result is a search result, never a clearance.Prior-testimony inventory. No prior-testimony list (of the kind produced under Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)(B)) was found in the public sources searched, and his public CV contains none — stated as a search result, not as a claim that none exists anywhere. Aggregate testimony figures in directory and firm materials are self-reported and are not an inventory.Pattern note (from the complete dossier)An observation over the eight matters above — a description of this set, not a prediction about any future ruling. In seven of the eight matters, the testimony challenged and ruled on concerned the quantification of hedonic damages or a category derived from the same value-of-statistical-life method; the courts' stated reasons recur — the method's fit to the damages category, figures built on a statistical average rather than case-specific facts, and reliability under Rule 702 / Daubert. In Passmore, the eighth matter, the hedonic and loss-of-society categories were withdrawn by agreement before any ruling, and the motion to bar the narrowed testimony was denied. In the two matters where part of the testimony went forward, what went forward was the non-quantitative or differently-grounded part: in Ingersoll-Rand, an explanation of the concept; in Do, the housekeeping calculation. Within this set, no other challenge to non-hedonic work as a standalone subject is recorded; whether that is because such testimony was not challenged, was challenged in rulings not published or not located, or was never offered is not established by this dossier.What the complete dossier document addsThis sample is presented in full as a web page. A dossier as delivered to a firm also includes a sources-searched appendix, a dated verification record, and leads noted during research; those delivery components are not reproduced on this public page.
• A sources-searched appendix — every source consulted, what it yielded, and when, including the negative results and the retrieval history of the Do Opinion.
• A per-claim verification record — each claim listed with its exact source and locator, the date checked, the result, the limitation that remains, and any correction the revision required. No blanket all-pass.
• Leads, recorded with a selection boundary — further matters referenced inside the opened opinions (including a household-services record in Passafiume and further hedonic-exclusion citations collected in the Do Opinion) are recorded as leads: not independently opened, not counted. An omitted entry may reflect an unreviewed lead, a stated scope exclusion, or no located record; omission is not a negative finding.Method note. Compiled from public records only. Before delivery, every dossier receives a second source-and-count check by the same research desk, recorded with its date in the dossier. This sample and the dossier standard also receive independent team review; client dossiers are not sent to outside reviewers. Compilation is AI-assisted — disclosed, not implied otherwise. Client dossiers are never published, and research for one firm is never shared with another.Scope & limits. This is the record found in the public sources searched. It is not a complete career record. The counted set is the eight matters above, each opened and read in full. Matters referenced inside an opened opinion but not independently opened are recorded as leads, not counted. No PACER docket sweep of this expert's appearances was performed, and no state-court database sweep beyond the sources named in the dossier; deposition testimony was not searched. "Verified" here means only: compiled from published opinions and publicly filed documents located in the sources searched, as of the date shown, with each entry cited and stated at the level of support its source provides. It never means a rating, a score, a prediction of admissibility, a background investigation, or a representation that no other challenges, exclusions, or records exist. Nothing on this page rates, scores, or clears the subject.
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