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Opposing Expert Report Review and Rebuttal
River grades every opinion against what the rules required the report to carry, then writes the deposition questions those same rules let you ask.
An expert report is two documents pressed together. One is the opinion set, which is argued about. The other is a disclosure the rules define item by item, which is checked. River separates them. Every opinion is numbered, matched to the stated basis and the facts behind it, and graded against the four things a court has to find before the opinion comes in. Every disclosure item is checked for whether it is actually there.
Most critiques come back as prose about methodology, which reads well and cannot be used at a deposition. This one comes back as a question set, sorted by what the rules permit rather than by how weak each opinion feels. Attorney communications with a retained expert are protected with three named exceptions, so three lines of questioning survive an objection and the rest of that channel does not. The outline is built from those three, plus the report's own gaps.
Litigation associates and trial counsel run this the week a report lands, because the rebuttal window is thirty days and it starts on service rather than on the day somebody reads it. It works from the same record as the fact register the case theory rests on, and it hands off to the digest that cites the deposition by page and line once the examination is done. The exhibits behind it usually arrive through a production that has to load first.
What the rule asks now, and who has to prove it
Rule 702 changed on 1 December 2023 and a report drafted from an older outline reads as though it did not. Expert testimony now comes in only where the proponent demonstrates to the court that it is more likely than not that four conditions hold. The fourth is that the opinion reflects a reliable application of the principles and methods to the facts of the case. The burden sits on the side offering the expert, condition by condition, so a critique organized around anything else is an argument about weight.
Casterline Freight's economist served 94 pages with a reliance list of 61 items. Fifty-two are Bates-numbered documents from the production, six are purchased industry data, and three are memoranda from Casterline's own counsel. Those three sit inside the exception for facts or data the party's attorney provided and the expert considered, so they are questions rather than objections. Opinion 5 rests on a seven-year loss period the report attributes to instructions. At $1.2 million a year, that assumption is $8.4 million of the number.
The clock is the other half. A disclosure intended solely to contradict or rebut evidence on the same subject matter is due within thirty days of the other party's disclosure, so a report served on 14 May puts the rebuttal on 13 June. That word solely also limits it. An affirmative opinion smuggled into a rebuttal is not rebuttal, and the safest sequence is to fix the scope first, then the deposition outline, then the report the outline proved you could write.
How it works
Hand over the report
The report, its exhibits and reliance list, the CV, the scheduling order and the service date.
Opinions get separated
Each opinion is numbered and matched to the basis, the facts and the exhibit the report gives it.
Disclosure gets audited
The six required contents are checked, and each gap is written as the motion it supports.
The outline comes back
Questions ordered by what the rules permit, each one carrying the report page that provoked it.
What you get
- Every opinion numbered, with its stated basis, its facts and the exhibits that carry it
- The six required contents of the report checked one by one, with what is missing named
- Each opinion graded against the four admissibility conditions, on the burden the current rule puts on them
- A deposition outline sorted by the three attorney-expert exceptions that survive an objection
- The reliance list split into produced documents, purchased data and material counsel handed the expert
- Every challenge point cited to the page of the report it came from
Common questions
Does this replace our own expert?
No. Your expert decides whether the method is sound, and nothing here substitutes for that judgment. What this produces is the structure your expert works inside: every opinion isolated with its stated basis, and every gap in the disclosure named. The question set arrives with it, so your expert spends an hour marking up rather than a morning rebuilding the argument from a ninety-page PDF.
What if we are in a state court that does not follow the federal rules?
Say so in the intake and the grading changes. Most states run a disclosure rule with a named content list and an admissibility standard, and the columns hold whichever ones apply. Where the governing provision cannot be confirmed, the row is marked untested rather than graded against a rule from the wrong jurisdiction.
Can I ask about the expert's emails with opposing counsel?
Only inside three doors. Communications between a party's attorney and a retained expert are protected, except where they relate to compensation, identify facts or data the attorney provided that the expert considered, or identify assumptions the attorney provided that the expert relied on. The outline stays inside those three, so the transcript is not a page of objections.
How does the thirty-day rebuttal window actually work?
It runs from the other party's disclosure, not from the day the report reaches your desk, and it applies where the evidence is intended solely to contradict or rebut evidence on the same subject matter. So the first output is a date, computed from the service date and checked against the scheduling order, the same way a discovery response deadline is computed rather than assumed.
Is a missing publication list actually worth a motion?
Sometimes, and the run tells you what it is worth rather than deciding. A gap in the required contents is a completeness argument with a range of outcomes, from a supplement on request to exclusion of the opinion the gap conceals. Each one comes back with the item, the page it should have been on, and what the omission actually hides.
What happens after the deposition?
The outline becomes a transcript, and the transcript has to be citable by page and line before any of it reaches a brief. Digesting it against the errata sheet and the prior statements is the next job, and the impeachment index it produces reads against the opinions numbered here.
Opposing Expert Report Review and Rebuttal
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