Citizen Developer, LLC v. System Soft Technologies, Inc.

Summary

The United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania addresses twelve motions in limine in a dispute involving alleged breaches of a Reseller Appointment Agreement and a counterclaim for tortious interference with contractual relations. The court grants in part and denies in part the plaintiff’s motion concerning unproduced documents, while denying without prejudice several motions concerning summary documents, lay-opinion testimony, and evidence relating to alleged breaches and damages. The memorandum discusses the standards governing motions in limine, lay and expert testimony, and summaries under Federal Rule of Evidence 1006.

Holdings

1. System Soft Technologies may not introduce at trial documents that it failed to produce to Citizen Developer during discovery. The court declined without prejudice to decide additional sanctions or whether particular testimony relying on such documents should be excluded before the testimony is presented.
2. The court should defer ruling on broad or context-dependent evidentiary objections when admissibility cannot be determined on all potential grounds before trial.
3. The term 'calendar year' as used in the agreement's marketing-spend provision is ambiguous because it is reasonably susceptible to both the conventional January-to-December meaning and the parties' proposed anniversary-based meaning. The jury must determine the meaning of the contract, so the court could not resolve the scope of the 2024 obligation or preclude related evidence at the motion-in-limine stage.
4. Citizen Developer may not use language before the jury suggesting that System Soft Technologies violated a court order, failed to produce documents, or engaged in spoliation. Discovery-related objections may instead be raised outside the jury's presence.
5. The court denied the motions to exclude expert testimony from Dominique Hanssens and David Reibstein and denied in part and without prejudice the motion concerning Rajkumar Venkatesan. Hanssens's rebuttal testimony was admissible without an alternative damages calculation, and disputes concerning Reibstein's data and methodology were appropriate subjects for cross-examination rather than exclusion. Venkatesan's testimony concerning alternate causes of lost profits was admissible, while objections to his first three conclusions were preserved for trial.

Questions Presented

1. Whether documents that System Soft Technologies failed to produce during discovery should be excluded from trial.
2. Whether disputed summary documents should be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 1006 before trial.
3. Whether deposition testimony from proposed lay-opinion witnesses should be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 701.
4. Whether the court could determine on a motion in limine whether the Reseller Appointment Agreement's marketing-spend obligation extended to calendar year 2024.
5. Whether the jury should be precluded from hearing arguments or evidence suggesting that System Soft Technologies violated discovery orders, failed to produce documents, or engaged in spoliation.
6. Whether expert testimony from Rajkumar Venkatesan, Dominique Hanssens, and David Reibstein satisfied Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert.

Disposition

other