No Breach of Contract no Bad Faith

Post 4568
Posted on October 23, 2026 by Barry Zalma

A Party Cannot Designate One Witness While Submitting An Undifferentiated Product Of That Witness And An Undesignated Collaborator.

Post 4568

In Dustin Cain; Amanda Cain v. State Farm Fire and Casualty Company, No. 25-60442, United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit (October 16, 2026) Dustin and Amanda Cain sought homeowners’ insurance benefits after a tree fell on their Mississippi home on August 27, 2022. State Farm concluded that the tree caused only a roof puncture and that other damage resulted from excluded long-term conditions. It paid $10,042.90 and later an additional $3,130.08.

The Cains relied on an engineering report and contractor estimate asserting substantially greater damage, sued for breach of contract and related relief, and designated Sean Fee as their sole expert. Fee’s report and a later repair estimate were jointly authored with Jim Irmiter, but neither document identified which opinions, work, or reasoning belonged to Fee.

The repair estimate was also served on the discovery deadline, months after the expert-designation deadline and without prior leave.

The district court struck the expert materials, entered summary judgment for State Farm because the Cains lacked admissible proof of causation and damages, and denied post-judgment relief.

LAW

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reviews exclusion of expert testimony and denial of Rule 59(e) relief for abuse of discretion, but reviews summary judgment de novo.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(2)(B)(i) requires a retained expert’s report to state completely the opinions that the witness will express and the bases and reasons for them. The expert must offer an independent opinion rather than serve as another person’s mouthpiece. A joint report may be permissible when each contributing expert is designated and the report clearly attributes opinions to each witness.

Under Mississippi law a bad-faith claim cannot survive without an underlying breach of the insurance contract.

DISCUSSION

The Cains argued that Fee and Irmiter had jointly reached a unified opinion and that any uncertainty concerned weight rather than admissibility. The Fifth Circuit rejected that position. The reports merely said both men contributed to, reviewed, and concurred in the contents; they did not reveal what work Fee performed, which conclusions were his, or the bases for his conclusions.

The problem was heightened because Irmiter was not designated as an expert. Without attribution, State Farm and the court could not meaningfully test Fee’s methodology or reliability. Once the expert evidence was excluded, the Cains conceded they could not prove the claimed damages. Their extra-contractual claims also failed because Mississippi bad-faith liability requires a viable underlying contract claim.

ANALYSIS

The decision turns on expert attribution, not a categorical ban on collaborative work. Its practical rule is that a party cannot designate one witness while submitting an undifferentiated product of that witness and an undesignated collaborator. Clear attribution is necessary to satisfy disclosure duties, permit effective deposition and cross-examination, and allow the trial court to perform its reliability-screening role.

The evidentiary ruling was dispositive because causation and repair costs were technical issues outside ordinary lay knowledge. The case also illustrates that the compounding risk of late expert supplementation. The appellate holding rests principally on the reports’ failure to identify Fee’s own opinions, waiting until the discovery deadline left little opportunity to cure the defect.

CONCLUSIONS

The Fifth Circuit affirmed. Before expert testimony may be subjected to the adversarial process, it must first be admissible. Here, the admissibility of the proposed expert reports was the issue, not their weight. Because the Johnsons' breach of contract claim fails, their bad faith claim necessarily fails. The district court correctly granted summary judgment dismissing all of the Cains' claims after it struck their proposed expert testimony and report.

ZALMA OPINION

In Federal Practice a designated expert must identify which opinions, work, or reasoning belonged to the designated expert. When the parties submitted an expert report in the name of a single expert when a second expert admittedly participated in the creation of the report but did not identify who did what to the report. Since it was filed late, could not be corrected, and did not identify who did what to the report. That failure caused the report and estimate to be rejected by the court and the plaintiff unable to prove their damages.

(c) 2026 Barry Zalma & ClaimSchool, Inc.

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