## Facts

- Marten Transport, Ltd., a motor carrier, used third-party recruiting websites to advertise driver openings and receive applications.
- PlattForm Advertising, Inc., operated multiple driver-recruiting websites and acquired certain sites that contained Marten-related job advertisements.
- Marten alleged PlattForm continued using Marten’s name and trademarks on recruiting sites after authorization ended, including allegedly to improve search-engine visibility.
- In pretrial proceedings, PlattForm moved to exclude expert testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert.
- Marten designated (1) Richard Follis, a trucking-industry consultant, to opine on trucking recruiting economics and on search-engine optimization (SEO) effects; and (2) Ronald Fischer, a computer-forensics consultant, to identify historical website content using archived webpages (including the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine).

## Issues

1. Whether Follis’s trucking-industry and driver-recruitment opinions were admissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702.
2. Whether Follis’s opinions that PlattForm used Marten’s trademarks to affect SEO and search-engine rankings were admissible under Rule 702 and Daubert.
3. Whether Fischer’s website-content opinions derived from archived webpages should be excluded under Rule 702.

## Decision

- The court granted PlattForm’s motion in part and denied it in part.
- The court excluded Follis’s opinions regarding SEO.
- The court admitted Follis’s opinions concerning trucking-industry recruiting dynamics, including driver turnover, hiring costs, driver shortages, and the business importance of capturing qualified applicants.
- The court denied the motion to exclude Fischer’s testimony identifying what content appeared on PlattForm’s websites at particular times based on archived webpages.

## Legal Principles

- Under Federal Rule of Evidence 702, expert testimony must be based on sufficient facts or data, be the product of reliable principles and methods, and reflect a reliable application of those principles and methods to the case.
- The trial court acts as a gatekeeper to exclude expert opinions that are speculative, methodologically unsupported, or outside the expert’s demonstrated qualifications.
- An expert may testify from industry experience on industry practices and economics, but that experience does not automatically qualify the expert to render technical opinions (such as SEO) without a reliable foundation.
- Testimony focused on identifying historical website content through recognized digital-forensics tools may be admissible when within the expert’s competence and grounded in explainable methods.

## Conclusion

The court applied Rule 702 to separate admissible industry-experience testimony from inadmissible technical speculation, excluding a trucking consultant’s SEO opinions for lack of qualified, reliable support while permitting his recruiting-economics testimony and admitting a computer-forensics expert’s archived-webpage evidence about what appeared on the disputed websites.


Marten Transport, Ltd. v. PlattForm Advertising, Inc., 184 F. Supp. 3d 1006 (D. Kan. 2016)