South Central Petroleum, Inc. v. Long Brothers Oil Co.
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
974 F.2d 1015 (8th Cir. 1992)
In a dispute over ownership of an oil well, South Central Petroleum's (SCPI) (defendant) expert witness calculated the revenue owed to Long Brothers Oil Company (plaintiff) based on production information that had passed from the well operator to the state government to a commercial production service before reaching the expert — information that was undisputedly hearsay but also undisputedly of a type experts in the field customarily relied upon. The district court admitted only the expert's opinion itself, not the underlying hearsay data, and granted SCPI summary judgment based on that expert's revenue calculation; Long Brothers appealed, arguing the court abused its discretion by relying on inadmissible hearsay.
Whether an expert witness may rely on inadmissible information to form an opinion if that information is of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field.