IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
United States Court of Appeals
FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT Fifth Circuit
FILED
_____________________
March 27, 2009
No. 08-30912
Summary Calendar Charles R. Fulbruge III
_____________________ Clerk
HEATHER JENKINS; MELISSA DAWN
McKEE
Plaintiffs-Appellants
v.
SLIDELLA, LLC; SIZELER REAL ESTATE
MANAGEMENT COMPANY, INC.; FLOURNOY
CONSTRUCTION COMPANY, LLC
Defendants-Appellees
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Eastern District of Louisiana
(2:05-CV-370)
Before WIENER, STEWART, and CLEMENT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:*
Plaintiffs-Appellants Heather Jenkins and Melissa Dawn McKee
(“Plaintiffs”) appeal from the district court’s grant of the summary judgment
motions of all defendants, dismissing plaintiffs’ action with prejudice. We
affirm.
Plaintiffs’ claims against the defendants are grounded in assertions
*
Pursuant to 5 TH C IR . R. 47.5, the court has determined that this opinion should not
be published and is not precedent except under the limited circumstances set forth in 5 TH
C IR . R. 47.5.4.
that they, as tenants under a residential lease of an apartment in Slidell,
Louisiana, allegedly owned by defendant Slidella LLC or Sizelor Property
Investors, Inc., or both, allegedly managed by Sizelor Real Estate
Management Company, Inc., and allegedly constructed by defendant
Flournoy Construction Company, LLC., suffered various health problems that
they attribute to exposure to toxic mold. Plaintiffs blame the presence of such
mold on errors or omissions of the various defendants.
Following the plaintiffs’ designation of Chester J. Doll, Johnny
Belenchia, and Ernest D. Lykissa as expert witnesses, defendants filed
motions in limine to exclude the testimony of those persons for their failure to
meet the requirements for expert testimony prescribed in Federal Rule of
Evidence 702 and Daubert v. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S.
579, 592-93 (1993). Defendants also filed motions for summary judgment of
dismissal, conditioned on their success in convincing the district court to
grant their motions in limine and exclude the testimony of the plaintiffs’
aforesaid expert witnesses.
Following due proceedings had, the district court granted those motions
in limine for reasons extensively set forth in the court’s Order and Reasons
entered June 27, 2008, and for additional reasons set forth in its Judgment of
July 17, 2008 dismissing plaintiffs’ suit with prejudice at their cost.
Following post-judgment motion practice, plaintiffs timely filed their notice of
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appeal on September 10, 2008.
We have now reviewed the record on appeal for this case, including the
briefs of the parties and the reasons explained by the district court for
excluding the testimony of the expert witnesses proffered by the plaintiffs, in
the absence of which plaintiffs obviously had insufficient evidence to pursue
their claims. Our de novo review of the rulings of the district court satisfies
us that they and the eventual orders and judgments of that court are not just
free of reversible error but are correct and proper. For essentially the same
reasons set forth by the district court, we affirm the exclusion of the
testimony of those expert witnesses and therefore affirm the judgment of the
district court dismissing the plaintiffs’ action with prejudice as well.
AFFIRMED.
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