On April 17, 2025, Justice Cohen of the New York County Commercial Division issued a decision in Homapour v. 3M Props., LLC, 2025 NY Slip Op. 31354(U), holding that experts may rely on the work of associates they supervise, explaining:
The Harounian Defendants’ primary challenge to Mr. Gutierrez’s stems from his alleged over-reliance on his associates. An expert may rely on assistants or the opinions of other experts in formulating their own expert opinions. However, the expert must supervise, direct, or participate in that work: the expert witness must in the end be giving his own opinion. He cannot simply be a conduit for the opinion of an unproduced expert.
Plaintiff retained Mr. Gutierrez, a Certified Public Accountant licensed in New York and Florida, to perform a forensic accounting analysis in connection with this litigation in early 2021. Gutierrez testified that although he signed the expert report submitted in this case, portions of the report—specifically those detailing the entities, ownership structures, and methodologies—were co-authored with his associate, Stefano D’Urso. Mr. D’Urso, along with another associate, Joseph Gangemi, conducted the primary review of more than 4,000 transactions, including invoices, checks, and supporting documents. Mr. Gutierrez testified that he did not personally review the original transaction records, and instead reviewed the work completed by his staff. Nevertheless, Mr. Gutierrez stated that he supervised and directed the associates’ work, meeting with them periodically to assess their progress, discuss their findings, and determine whether further analysis was warranted. Mr. Gutierrez retained final decision-making authority over the scope and sufficiency of the review and found no errors in the associates’ work. Though the degree of Mr. Gutierrez’s involvement in analyzing the transactions at issue is a valid subject to raise on cross examination, and his deposition testimony may limit the permissible scope of his testimony at trial, his testimony should not be precluded entirely (though the Court may revisit this issue depending on the specific testimony offered at trial.
(Internal quotations and citations omitted).