Conjoint survey damages expert
Expert class library · Consumer class actions · Plaintiff side
Designs choice-based conjoint surveys to measure the price premium consumers paid for a challenged feature or label claim. Combines survey results with supply-side data to compute class-wide damages.
What this expert is retained to answer
- What price premium, if any, did consumers pay because of the challenged label claim or feature?
- Can the premium be calculated for the whole class with one survey-based method?
- Does the survey isolate each challenged statement separately?
- Does the model reflect real market prices and quantities rather than only consumer preferences?
Methods
- Choice-based conjoint survey
- Willingness-to-pay estimation
- Supply-side market simulation
- Attribute and level selection
How the testimony is attacked
- Demand side only. Defendants argue conjoint measures willingness to pay but not the market price, which also reflects supply. Dial Complete accepted a design that used real market prices and held quantity sold constant, while other courts, as Dial noted, have rejected demand-only models.
- Focalism bias from too few attributes. Showing respondents only a handful of attributes can inflate the apparent value of the challenged claim. In Townsend the court found the plaintiffs had not justified the attribute selection against the defense survey expert's focalism critique.
- Altered or unrepresentative claim wording. Rewording the challenged statements for the survey can break the link to what consumers actually saw. Townsend struck results for statements the expert changed without adequate explanation.
- Survey not yet executed. Defendants argue an unrun survey cannot show damages are measurable class-wide. The Ninth Circuit in Lytle rejected a rule requiring execution before certification when the design is complete.
- Damages not tied to the liability theory. Under Comcast the model must measure only damages from the challenged conduct. Lytle found a conjoint design acceptable because it could assign a value to each challenged statement.
What the public record shows
A deliberately narrow CourtListener search, "conjoint analysis" AND "price premium" AND (Daubert OR "Rule 702"), returned 11 opinions filed since 2015, as of October 2, 2026; broader searches return more. Three that show how courts handle this class of testimony:
| Outcome | Case | Court | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Limited | Townsend v. Monster Beverage Corp.303 F. Supp. 3d 1010 | C.D. Cal. 2018 | The court admitted the plaintiffs' conjoint survey data only for one challenged statement, struck results for statements the expert reworded without adequate justification, and found the resulting price premium unreliable because the attribute selection invited focalism bias. |
| Admitted | Lytle v. Nutramax Laboratories, Inc.99 F.4th 557 | 9th Cir. 2024 | The Ninth Circuit affirmed class certification based on a fully designed but not yet executed conjoint survey, holding that execution is not a prerequisite where the method reliably fits the liability theory. |
| Admitted | In re Dial Complete Marketing & Sales Practices Litigation320 F.R.D. 326 | D.N.H. 2017 | The court admitted the plaintiffs' conjoint analysis, treating objections to its inputs as matters of weight and accepting that using actual market prices and holding quantity constant addressed the demand-only critique. |
Each case links to the free opinion text on CourtListener.
Under amended Rule 702
Since December 1, 2023, Rule 702 says expressly that the party offering an expert must show the court it is more likely than not that the testimony meets each requirement: that it rests on sufficient facts or data, uses reliable methods, and reflects a reliable application of those methods to the case. Questions about the basis of an opinion are no longer automatically matters of weight for the jury. For how the circuits have applied the amendment, see the Rule 702 tracker, which follows each court of appeals; for what that means for preparing or attacking this class of expert, see the guide on amended Rule 702.
Related classes
- Defense survey rebuttal expert
- Hedonic regression price-premium economist
- Consumer perception survey expert
Guides
Simulating this class on a matter
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Last reviewed October 2, 2026. How this page is built: rulings are found by searching court opinions on CourtListener, and each one is read in the opinion before it is summarised here; outcomes are labelled by what the court did with the expert's testimony. No individual expert is named. This page summarises public decisions for orientation and is not legal advice; read the opinion before relying on any ruling.