Litigation Surveys & Rebuttals

Litigation survey experts can be engaged any time prior to disclosure of expert witnesses. Law firms and legal departments most commonly call on them after deciding on a legal strategy, but can and do call during pre-litigation risk assessment, discovery planning, or prior to filing or responding to a complaint. Early involvement allows the expert to design and frame survey objectives, assess evidentiary needs, and design a methodology aligned with applicable legal standards.

The Litigation Surveys and Consumer Science group at IMS Legal Strategies provides survey and rebuttal expertise through the litigation lifecycle. Survey expert witnesses are often retained during the pre-litigation phase to evaluate issues like the likelihood of confusion, materiality, or damages, and to inform decisions and litigation strategies regarding whether to file suit, seek early resolution, or pursue injunctive relief.

Survey experts may also be engaged during the early litigation phase, in connection with pleadings, temporary restraining orders, or preliminary injunction motions. During the fact discovery phase, survey experts may be retained to design and execute litigation-ready consumer surveys that address the claims and defenses at issue. In Daubert and admissibility challenges, experts defend their research or rebut opposing survey evidence. During the trial phase, survey experts may present testimony to judges or juries, explaining their findings.

Surveys may play a role in litigation strategies for false advertising, trademark disputes, patent issues, and any other disputes that require reliable evidence of consumer perceptions. These disputes arise in federal district courts, state courts, private bodies, and administrative proceedings. Jurists have relied on IMS litigation surveys in proceedings before U.S. courts, before private self-regulatory tribunals, and in matters involving regulatory scrutiny.

IMS designs and executes litigation surveys grounded in accepted social science and legal principles, whose accepted methodologies include likelihood of confusion surveys, false or deceptive advertising surveys, materiality surveys, secondary meaning surveys, and damages-related surveys, such as price premium and willingness-to-pay analyses.

Surveys are designed and executed to measure an audience’s opinions or experiences accurately, and to withstand judicial scrutiny. Read more about accepted survey methodologies here.

The litigation surveys and rebuttals group at IMS Legal Strategies comprises leading litigation survey expert witnesses who have designed, executed, and defended surveys admitted into evidence and relied upon by courts. Their testimony helps clients successfully defend against Daubert and other admissibility challenges. IMS survey experts have contributed to favorable outcomes in high-stakes litigation involving nearly every industry, including consumer products, healthcare, financial services, technology, and regulated industries.

Explore case studies to see how we help clients achieve favorable outcomes.

Decision-makers rely on IMS survey methodologies in matters involving the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the BBB National Programs, National Advertising Division (NAD). Regulatory bodies overseeing advertising and marketing practices expect consumer survey research to be reliably conducted and defensible.

We bring decades of research and survey design expertise and deliver nuanced research that meet litigation and regulatory survey expectations.

The litigation surveys and rebuttals group at IMS Legal Strategies provides written reports and evidence rebutting survey evidence of all kinds. Our experts identify design flaws, biases, leading questions, analytical errors, deviations from accepted standards, and other serious concerns about litigation surveys. Explore a sample rebuttal case study here.