United States v. Veysey No.

99 CR 381, October 23, 2000

Facts

Veysey (D) was charged with schemes to intentionally cause losses to his property in order to collect insurance proceeds. D was charged with starting fires at his own residences. During his trial, the government wanted to enter evidence from McClenahan, an actuarial, about the odds of an individual suffering four serious house fires in a 106-month period of time at random is 1 in 1.7 trillion. D moved in limine to bar the testimony under Rules 701,702, 704, and 403. In reaching his conclusion, McClenahan consulted the residential fire rate in the U.S. from 1988-1997. He assumed that each of the four fires at D’s residences was a serious fire that resulted in a loss of more than 20% of the dwelling-house. Then McClenahan used a binomial model based on monthly fire probabilities using recognized statistical software.