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Construction Defect Dispute Evidence Ruling

Court Rules that Extrapolation Evidence is Admissible in Construction Defect Dispute

Jesse Howard Witt
February 7, 2012

On 29 November 2011, the District Court for Adams County, Colorado, issued a well-reasoned order denying a motion to preclude the use of extrapolation evidence in a construction defect suit that The Witt Law Firm is currently prosecuting.

The case involves a homeowner association’s claim for defective vinyl siding installation. The association has alleged that the installer failed to use a required weather-resistive barrier and made other errors. The installer argued that the association’s experts had improperly relied on findings from a small sample of data to conclude that all of the siding in the community needed replacement. 

In its order, the court observed that to extrapolate means “to project, extend, or expand known data or experience into an area not known or experienced so as to arrive at a conjectural knowledge of the unknown area.” The court then found that the association had obtained deposition testimony from two witnesses confirming that the siding had been installed using the same procedure on every building, and that the association’s experts had confirmed that this procedure was defective. The court therefore concluded that “there is little, if any, extrapolation regarding the absence of the weather-resistive barrier and the commonality of the method of installing the siding.” 

The court went on to hold that any arguments about the methodology that the association’s experts used would merely be an issue of weight and credibility for the jury: “to the extent any opinion of the experts regarding the absence of any weather-resistive barrier or installation defects on all of the buildings may be based on extrapolation, it would go to the weight to be given the testimony.”

SOURCE: www.construction-law.lawyers.com

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