Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah... but it's not an expert witness.

Cabinets open. Cabinets close. Cabinets hold, in my case, about 13 boxes of macaroni and cheese because when I see it on sale, I almost automatically buy it just to have around, even though in reality our family almost never eats macaroni and cheese.

And, cabinets require expert witnesses to tell the Courts their value. That's the rule of Shoemaker v. KraftMaid Cabinetry, Inc., a 2001 Wisconsin case which saw Susan Shoemaker suing KraftMaid for allegedly defective cabinets. She testified that the cabinets arrived with scratches, chips and no finish. She also said that the installation damaged her hardwood floors and that a KraftMaid employee had given her bad advice on the range hood she purchased. She said then that the cabinets began coming apart and deteriorating. This led her to get replacement parts from another store, and a quote for repairs, and to sue.

She lost.

Not, it seems, because there were no problems, but because Susan didn't "prove her damages." After all that testimony, Susan had a summary of what she'd spent, and an estimate from another store about the cost to fix things up... but neither got into evidence, and Susan's case was dismissed for failing to prove that she'd been damaged.

Anyone can sue anyone at anytime for anything -- but courts, in general, award money to fix things up, which requires that a litigant prove they've lost money or that money would fix what they've lost. Susan testified clearly what she'd lost -- she had, in her opinion, crummy cabinets. But Susan had no evidence of what that had cost her. Or, at least, no competent evidence -- no evidence that could be admitted in court.

Susan's summary of damages and her estimate from another store were hearsay and were beyond her ability to testify to.

The estimate was a statement by someone outside of court; that's hearsay, and it's rarely admissible.

Susan's opinion of the value of cabinets wasn't "hearsay," because she was saying it in court. But it was incompetent, because Susan wasn't an expert in construction, or cost, or estimation of value, of cabinets. When evidence is needed on an area outside the ordinary person's expertise-- like how much it'll cost to fix cabinets -- an expert witness is needed; the party must find someone who has special qualifications in the subject that ordinary people don't, and have that person testify.

Susan probably could have simply had the person who wrote up the estimate come in and testify. The Court of Appeals even suggested as much: "The cost of the repair was an out-of-court statement made by [the estimator] but no representative from [that company] was called to testify.

Susan was allowed to testify as to what she'd actually spent on a new range hood -- but even there she lost, because she had no evidence of the value of the range hood that she'd gotten. Testifying as to the value of a defective or improper range hood requires expert testimony, too, meaning that Susan hadn't shown the difference in value between what she'd gotten and what she should have gotten.

With that failure of proof, all the problems in the world didn't amount to a hill of beans, because Susan had no proveable damages, and without proof of how much money she should be awarded, the Court couldn't award her anything.

Hopefully, though, her cabinets can still hold macaroni.