Alter Domus (US) LLC v. Winget

District Court, E.D. Michigan·Decided November 27, 2024·No. 2:23-cv-10458·Unknown

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN SOUTHERN DIVISION ALTER DOMUS, LLC,

Plaintiff/Counter-Defendant, Case Number 23-10458 v. Honorable David M. Lawson

LARRY J. WINGET and JVIS-USA, LLC,

Defendants/Counter-Plaintiffs, ________________________________________/

OPINION AND ORDER GRANTING IN PART AND DENYING IN PART PLAINTIFF’S MOTION TO EXCLUDE OPINIONS OF DEFENDANT’S EXPERT WITNESS GREGORY LIGHT One of the issues in this lawsuit brought by plaintiff Alter Domus to enforce its interest in certain promissory notes issued by defendant JVIS-USA, LLC, is whether that defendant was insolvent when it issued those notes. Defendant JVIS-USA intends to offer the testimony of appraiser Gregory Light on the value of the company when it issued the notes on June 29, 2017. Alter Domus, an agent for a consortium of investors, moved to exclude that opinion testimony, arguing that his methodology is flawed, his conclusions are unreliable, he failed to furnish certain supporting documentation and respond to deposition questions, and therefore the defendant cannot satisfy the requirements of Evidence Rule 702 and Civil Rule 26(a)(2). With one exception — a legal conclusion offered by Light that is not helpful and that he is not qualified to give — his purported testimony likely will be admissible. The motion, therefore, will be granted in part and denied in part. The Court granted in part and denied in part the motion on the record. This opinion more fully explains its rationale. I. The facts of the case are familiar to the parties, and the Court has summarized them in the several opinions filed in this case and the related matter of Alter Domus v. Larry J. Winget, No. 08-13845 (E.D. Mich.). For the purpose of this motion, it is enough to say that JVIS issued two promissory notes in the total amount of $150 million, which plaintiff Alter Domus now holds through its effort to collect a judgment against the Larry J. Winger Trust. In this action on the notes, payment of which is in default, JVIS filed a counterclaim seeking for a declaratory judgment that the notes were unlawful distributions, and that the Agent is barred from enforcing them. JVIS

contends that the notes amounted to unlawful distributions under Michigan’s LLC statute because it was insolvent when they were issued. The Agent seeks to exclude the testimony of JVIS’s expert, appraiser Gregory Light. According to his report dated December 19, 2023, Light endeavored to analyze the value of JVIS as of June 29, 2017 “under the solvency test . . . prescribed under MCL 450.4307 et. seq.” ECF No. 120-3, PageID.1480. His analysis consisted of the following steps: 1. Calculating the equity position as of the Measurement Date of JVIS USA (excluding its membership interest in JVIS Manufacturing, LLC (“JVIS Manufacturing”)); 2. Estimating the value of JVIS USA’s membership interest in JVIS Manufacturing; 3. Summing the items above to determine the total equity position of JVIS USA and determining whether or not its assets exceeded its liabilities; and 4. Preparing other analyses to support whether or not these conclusions were reasonable and supportable as detailed in the “Other Considerations” section of this report. Ibid. Light explained that JVIS is comprised of two operating business units, JVIS USA – Imports and JVIS USA – Harper, as well as its membership interest in JVIS Manufacturing, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary. Id. at PageID.1481. To determine the equity value of JVIS, he added the balance sheets of Harper and Imports to obtain their equity value and added the estimated market value of JVIS’s membership interests in JVIS Manufacturing — the calculation of which consumes the majority of his report — leading to a total of negative value of $11,946,780. Ibid. Light concluded that “JVIS USA has liabilities exceeding its assets and under the Test prescribed under the Statute, [so] distributions cannot be made.” Ibid. The Agent contends that Light failed to give full consideration to alternate valuation methods that are allowed for determining the validity of distributions under Michigan Complied Laws § 450.4307. His methodology is flawed, it says, because he used inconsistent methods for

his evaluation of different operating units within JVIS, and his methodology is unreliable because he could not certify that the financial statements he used were prepared by acceptable accounting principles. He also contends that Light refused to produce a spreadsheet that he used to create the schedules to his report, and he refused to answer questions during his deposition about work he had performed for Rehmann Consulting to value JVIS in 2016. JVIS disputes each of these arguments in turn. II. As a general matter, “expert” testimony consists of opinions or commentary grounded in “specialized knowledge,” that is, knowledge that is “beyond the ken of the average juror.” See

United States v. Rios, 830 F.3d 403, 413 (6th Cir. 2016); Fed. R. Evid. 702. Such testimony is governed by Evidence Rule 702, which was modified in December 2000 to reflect the Supreme Court’s emphasis in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999), on the trial court’s gate-keeping obligation to conduct a preliminary assessment of relevance and reliability whenever a witness testifies to an opinion based on specialized knowledge. Before expert witness testimony may be received, the proponent must demonstrate that, more likely than not, the testimony is “(a) helpful to the trier of fact, (b) ‘based on sufficient facts or data,’ and (c) ‘the product of reliable principles and methods’ that (d) have been ‘reliably applied‘ to the ‘facts of the case.’” In re Onglyza (Saxagliptin) & Kombiglyze (Saxagliptin & Metformin) Prod. Liab. Litig., 93 F.4th 339, 345 (6th Cir. 2024) (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 702 (2011)). “The task for the district court in deciding whether an expert’s opinion is reliable is not to determine whether it is correct, but rather to determine whether it rests upon a reliable foundation, as opposed to, say, unsupported speculation.” In re Scrap Metal Antitrust Litig., 527 F.3d 517, 529-30 (6th Cir. 2008).

Rule 702 was amended in 2023 to reinforce the idea, sidestepped sometimes by some courts, that Evidence Rule 104(a) entrusts the court with deciding whether the admissibility criteria have been satisfied, rather than treating them as “questions of weight” to be determined by the factfinder. Fed. R. Evid. 702 Advisory Committee Notes to 2023 Amendments; see also Fed. R. Evid. 104(a) (“The court must decide any preliminary question about whether a witness is qualified, a privilege exists, or evidence is admissible.”). However, “nothing in the amendment requires the court to nitpick an expert’s opinion in order to reach a perfect expression of what the basis and methodology can support. The Rule 104(a) standard does not require perfection.” Rule 702 Advisory Committee Notes to 2023 Amendments.

A.

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