BREAH BEDFORD v. BRANDON DEWITT (2026)

Chicago Police Department officer Brandon DeWitt shoved Breah Bedford to the ground while breaking up an altercation with bar owner Joseph Plewa and his bouncers. Bedford and her acquaintance Simone Jones sued Officer DeWitt, Plewa, and others for their injuries. A jury returned a split verdict at trial, awarding Jones damages against Plewa and his business but rejecting Bedford's excessive-force claim against Officer DeWitt. Bedford now asks us to vacate and remand for a new trial, contending the district court committed five separate evidentiary errors that undermined the jury's verdict.

In reviewing these issues, we must not second-guess the district court's reasonable exercises of its discretion because we are further removed from the facts and proceedings below. With this principle in mind, we conclude that none of Bedford's evidentiary issues, either individually or collectively, constitute reversible error. We affirm.

I. Background

A. Factual Background

Bedford's appeal “turns on an analysis of the evidentiary ruling[s] in the context of the entire trial record.” Barber v. City of Chicago, 725 F.3d 702, 705 (7th Cir. 2013). We thus recount the underlying facts from the evidence adduced at trial, noting contested details where they arise.

Bedford and her friends were visiting Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood on June 24, 2018, the day of the city's annual Pride Parade. A little after 9 p.m. that evening, she and Jones were part of a group gathered on the sidewalk outside Plewa's bar Big City Tap on Belmont Avenue. Plewa told them to move down the sidewalk; they did, but not far enough for Plewa's liking. Bedford and Jones (both of whom are Black), as well as multiple other witnesses, alleged that Plewa started calling them racial slurs and telling them to “go back to the South Side” of Chicago. Plewa denied doing so, but acknowledged that he and multiple security staff told the group to move away from his property. The situation escalated: Plewa dragged Jones into an outside vestibule and held her down, while Bedford started hitting at Plewa and his bouncers with a bra and plastic necklace, attempting to get them off Jones.

Then Chicago Police Department (“CPD”) officers arrived on the scene. Footage from several bystanders' phones captures a critical moment: Officer Brandon DeWitt approached Bedford from behind and shoved her to the ground. Bedford hit the ground and began spasming violently. The footage captures angry verbal reactions from bystanders: “Why you slam her like that?” and “She's having a seizure!” Officer DeWitt did not have his body-worn camera activated at the time.

An ambulance arrived and took Bedford to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where she was admitted to the intensive care unit. Bedford stayed at Illinois Masonic for the next two days, during which she met with a psychiatrist, Dr. Philippe Tapon. Bedford told Dr. Tapon that she had experienced seizure-like episodes since childhood. Dr. Tapon diagnosed her with “psychogenic non-epileptiform seizures” (“PNES”), a condition that he described to the jury as “where someone moves as if they're having a seizure” but is “not choosing to do so” and not “conscious of it.”

Nurse Kymarie Soest also treated Bedford during her stay at Illinois Masonic. Nurse Soest testified that Bedford was combative towards hospital staff and, at one point, swatted at a technician who was removing leads from her forehead. Bedford tried to discharge herself against medical advice while agitated, but she fell back into another seizure-like episode as staff removed the remaining leads. Nurse Soest recalled that when she was talking to a doctor about potential medical interventions, Bedford became “very angry” and threatened her, saying “I'm going to kill that Asian bi**h” (which Bedford denied saying). Nurse Soest filed a police report based on Bedford's alleged threat. She also recalled Bedford making statements during her hospital stay about wanting to sue CPD for its officers' conduct.

B. Procedural History

Bedford and Jones sued Plewa and his business, as well as Officer DeWitt, other officers, and the City of Chicago. The district court dismissed some of their claims at summary judgment but allowed others—including Bedford's excessive-force claim against Officer DeWitt and both Plaintiffs' state tort claims against Plewa—to proceed to trial. We collectively refer here to Officer DeWitt, the City, and other named officers as “the City Defendants,” though only Bedford's claim against DeWitt is at issue in this appeal.

1. Motions in Limine

In the lead-up to trial, both sides filed motions in limine seeking to admit or exclude evidence. Five are relevant to this appeal.

First, Bedford moved to prevent the City Defendants' expert, neurologist Dr. Alan Shepard, from testifying under Federal Rules of Evidence 702 and 403, which respectively address expert testimony and unfairly prejudicial evidence. Dr. Shepard agreed in his report with Dr. Tapon's initial diagnosis that Bedford did not suffer from epilepsy, but he disagreed that her PNES was involuntary; he described it as “purposeful” and opined that she was “exaggerating” her condition due to a “psychiatric problem or secondary gain.”¹ Bedford argued that Dr. Shepard's opinions were unnecessary (as she did not contend she suffered from epilepsy), unreliable, and improperly usurped the jury's role of assessing credibility.

The district court granted Bedford's motion in part during the final pretrial conference. The district court excluded the phrase “secondary gain” as “overly prejudicial” under Rule 403. But it held Dr. Shepard could discuss “malingering”—which, it noted, is a recognized concept in psychiatry.²

Second, Bedford sought to preclude Nurse Soest from testifying about (among other things) their interactions at Illinois Masonic as irrelevant under Rule 401 or, alternatively, unduly prejudicial under Rule 403, as well as improper “bad acts” evidence under Rule 404(b). The district court denied the motion in relevant part, holding (subject to revision during trial) that Nurse Soest could testify as to Bedford's behavior and her statements about suing CPD.

Third, Bedford moved to exclude evidence related to CPD's “use of force” model, which sets out the department's guidelines on appropriate responses to situations presenting different threat levels. The district court denied the motion, holding that Officer DeWitt could discuss his training on the model and that the jury would be instructed not to confuse allowable force under CPD's model with the ultimate question of reasonable force under the Constitution.

Fourth, the City Defendants moved to exclude audio from any videos of the Big City Tap incident, arguing they contained inadmissible hearsay or improper opinion testimony from bystanders filming the incident. The district court ultimately granted the motion as to two cell-phone videos that captured bystanders' oral reactions to Officer DeWitt's use of force on Bedford. Both videos were played silently for the jury at trial.

Fifth, both sides contested the admissibility of evidence about Officer DeWitt's prior uses of force on civilians and other disciplinary history. Bedford argued this evidence was admissible under Rule 404(b)(2) to show his improper motives in shoving Bedford. The City Defendants argued it was inadmissible because it was irrelevant, confusing, unduly prejudicial, and inadmissible propensity evidence. The district court largely granted the City Defendants' motion and denied Bedford's: It kept out evidence of Officer DeWitt's prior uses of force, but allowed evidence about prior discipline he received for turning off his dash-cam.

2. The Trial

The case proceeded to a jury trial. The jury heard testimony from a number of witnesses, including Dr. Shepard and Nurse Soest, as well as Dr. Tapon (the psychiatrist who had evaluated Bedford at Illinois Masonic). When Nurse Soest took the stand, the district court overruled Bedford's renewed objection and allowed her to testify about Bedford's racial threats and statements about suing CPD during her time at Illinois Masonic. But the district court stopped the proceedings when Nurse Soest began testifying about the police report she filed against Bedford and instructed the jury to disregard any testimony to that effect.

On the stand, Dr. Shepard reiterated his report's conclusions that Bedford did not have epilepsy and that her PNES—which he referred to as “pseudo-seizures”—could be voluntary. The district court allowed him to define the term “malingering” as “somebody that's feigning an illness or neurological deficit,” though it instructed the jury to disregard a reference Dr. Shepard made to the term “secondary gain.” Then, over Bedford's repeated objections, Dr. Shepard proceeded to give a list of hypothetical examples of malingering without referring to Bedford by name, including “somebody that slips on the ice in front of Target ․ saying they can't move their legs normally, whereas you may examine them and ․ feel that they should be normal,” a “student who doesn't want to go to school and will fake an illness,” and an employee “seeking [worker's] compensation.” Dr. Shepard was also allowed to testify that “it [is] possible for a person to fake a seizure to avoid getting arrested,” again without naming Bedford specifically.

After deliberating, the jury returned a split verdict. It found Plewa and his business liable to Jones for negligence and other state-law violations and awarded her a little over $120,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. But the jury ruled against Bedford on all of her claims against both Officer DeWitt and Plewa.

Bedford now appeals the district court's final judgment as to her excessive-force claim against Officer DeWitt only.

II. Discussion

Bedford challenges five discrete evidentiary rulings made in connection with the trial. She contends the district court erred in: (1) allowing Dr. Shepard to testify about hypothetical examples of malingering; (2) allowing Nurse Soest to testify about her behavior at Illinois Masonic; (3) allowing evidence about CPD's use-of-force model; (4) excluding the audio from the bystander videos; and (5) excluding evidence of Officer DeWitt's prior use-of-force incidents.

In addressing these issues, we review the district court's interpretation of the Rules of Evidence de novo and its ultimate applications of the correct legal standards for abuse of discretion. Carter v. City of Wauwatosa, 114 F.4th 866, 879 (7th Cir. 2024). A district court abuses its discretion in this context only if its ruling was “manifestly erroneous”—that is, a decision with which “no reasonable person would agree.” Gopalratnam v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 877 F.3d 771, 782 (7th Cir. 2017) (cleaned up). Even if there is error, we will not reverse unless there is a “significant chance ․ that the ruling affected the outcome of trial.” Nielsen v. Sexton, 168 F.4th 968, 996 (7th Cir. 2026) (citation omitted). Taking each issue in turn, we conclude that Bedford has not met these demanding standards and so affirm.

A. Dr. Shepard's Testimony

Bedford's challenge to Dr. Shepard's testimony presents the most difficult issue in this case. Ultimately, though, we do not find reversible error.

Rule 702 tasks district courts with the “gatekeeping responsibility” of ensuring that proposed expert testimony will reliably assist the jury. Kirk v. Clark Equipment Co., 991 F.3d 865, 872 (7th Cir. 2021) (citing Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 589 (1993)). To do so, district courts must evaluate “(1) the proffered expert's qualifications; (2) the reliability of the expert's methodology; and (3) the relevance of the expert's testimony.” Id. (citation omitted). And all evidence—including expert testimony—must pass Rule 403's general balancing test for unfair prejudice. United States v. Hall, 93 F.3d 1337, 1344 (7th Cir. 1996).

Bedford does not claim that the district court misinterpreted Rule 702 or Daubert in evaluating Dr. Shepard's proposed testimony. Rather, she argues that the district court abused its discretion under both Rules 702 and 403 by allowing his testimony on “malingering.”³ His descriptions of hypothetical “malingerers,” she contends, made an end-run around the district court's pretrial ruling excluding mention of “secondary gain” by leading the jury to the natural inference that she was faking her injuries for self-interested reasons. And she argues that his testimony was unhelpful under Rule 702 because it invaded the quintessential “province of the trier of fact”—gauging her credibility and motives. Goodwin v. MTD Products, Inc., 232 F.3d 600, 609 (7th Cir. 2000).

As the district court remarked during the pretrial conference, Bedford did not file a separate Daubert motion seeking to exclude Dr. Shepard, and only sought to do so as part of her omnibus motion-in-limine filings on the eve of trial. We do not suggest Bedford's late-breaking motion changes the district court's important role as gatekeeper. But we caution that expert issues are often complex, and it behooves all parties to allow ample time for district courts to consider and weigh them.

Still, Bedford raises a valid point that expert testimony on malingering can pose heightened concerns under both Rules 702 and 403. In Nichols v. American National Insurance Co., for example, the Eighth Circuit held that expert testimony “impugning [the plaintiff's] psychiatric credibility and suggesting that ․ malingering had influenced her story was not a proper subject of expert testimony under” Rule 702 and “create[d] a serious danger of confusing or misleading the jury” under Rule 403. 154 F.3d 875, 883 (8th Cir. 1998). The Eighth Circuit's conclusion as to 702 rested on both helpfulness and reliability grounds: “The record does not show that these theories met the Daubert criteria, and in her testimony [the expert] sought to answer the very question at the heart of the jury's task—could [plaintiff] be believed?” Id. And in Rodriguez v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to adopt a “bright-line rule categorically excluding” the term “malingering” under that state's version of Rule 403, but noted that the term “raises heightened concerns since it may implicate credibility” and cautioned trial courts to “carefully scrutinize[ ]” its use. 237 N.J. 36, 65–66 (2019). While neither Nichols nor Rodriguez are binding authority here, they both highlight potential concerns with expert testimony on malingering. District courts should thus handle such evidence with great care.

Dr. Shepard's testimony implicates these concerns, but our review of the district court's decision to allow it is limited and highly deferential. Gopalratnam, 877 F.3d at 782. District courts have “broad discretion” to gauge expert helpfulness and reliability under Rule 702, and “are not compelled to exclude all expert testimony merely because it overlaps with matters within the jury's experience.” United States v. Curtin, 142 F.4th 503, 509 (7th Cir. 2025) (citation omitted). And our review under Rule 403 is even more limited: “only in an extreme case are appellate judges competent to second-guess the judgment of the person on the spot, the trial judge,” in balancing probative value against unfair prejudice. Agushi v. Duerr, 196 F.3d 754, 761 (7th Cir. 1999) (cleaned up).

Under these deferential standards, the district court's decision to allow Dr. Shepard's brief testimony on malingering did not cross the line into an abuse of discretion. Bedford has not meaningfully contested that Dr. Shepard's training allowed him to testify about the nonphysical nature of PNES and opine that it could be either conscious or involuntary.⁴ It was no abuse of discretion to let him inform the jury about these general concepts.

Dr. Shepard's hypothetical examples of malingering could perhaps come close to the impermissible territory of assessing Bedford's credibility and motives—as well as the district court's disallowance of testimony on “secondary gain.” The district court's initial instinct to exclude this kind of testimony was understandable, and the later hypotheticals at trial can be viewed as another way of indirectly illustrating “secondary gain.” But we cannot say the district court manifestly erred by momentarily allowing Dr. Shepard to venture outside, but adjacent to, his permissible scope of testimony. Dr. Shepard's testimony fell far short of what the Eighth Circuit found to cross the line in Nichols, where the expert testified that the plaintiff herself was in fact “affected by secondary gain and malingering” and directly questioned her credibility. 154 F.3d at 882. And it was the district court's prerogative to construe its own motion-in-limine ruling narrowly during the trial. Even if we might rule differently in the first instance, we must give district courts leeway unless “no reasonable person” would have reached the same conclusion. Gopalratnam, 877 F.3d at 782 (citation omitted). We thus find no abuse of discretion in allowing Dr. Shepard's brief testimony on malingering.

B. Nurse Soest's Testimony

Bedford next argues that Nurse Soest's testimony on her behavior while admitted at Illinois Masonic Hospital was un-duly prejudicial under Rule 403 and improper “bad acts” evidence under Rule 404(b). While we agree Nurse Soest's testimony could have prejudiced Bedford, we do not think any such prejudice rose to the level of an abuse of discretion.

As an initial matter, we do not see Nurse Soest's testimony about Bedford's behavior as a Rule 404(b) issue. Rule 404(b) prohibits evidence “of any other crime, wrong, or act” from being used “to prove a person's character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with that character.” Fed. R. Evid. 404(b)(1) (emphasis added). But Defendants did not invoke Nurse Soest's testimony to prove that Bedford acted like she did at Illinois Masonic on any other occasion. Rather, they argued it was relevant to her damages (and, in turn, the extent of Officer DeWitt's use of force), as well as her credibility. The real question is whether, despite this potential relevance, Nurse Soest's testimony caused the jurors “to decide the case on an improper basis” in violation of Rule 403 by painting Bedford as a flawed individual unworthy of recovery. Barber, 725 F.3d at 714, 717 (citation omitted).

With that framing in mind, we concur with the district court's assessment of most of Nurse Soest's testimony. Evidence that Bedford may have refused to cooperate with treatment spoke to the important issue of her damages, even if it also cast her in a less-than-flattering light. See Lawson v. Trowbridge, 153 F.3d 368, 376–77 (7th Cir. 1998) (Section 1983 plaintiffs must mitigate their damages). And evidence of her intent to sue CPD spoke to her possible motives for remaining at the hospital, though the jury need not have drawn this inference against her. Cf. Mathis v. Phillips Chevrolet, Inc., 269 F.3d 771, 776 (7th Cir. 2001) (district courts are afforded “great deference” in “balancing ․ probative value” against “the danger of unfair prejudice inherent in a charge of litigiousness”).

The rationale for admitting Nurse Soest's comments about Bedford's alleged racial threat—“I'm going to kill that Asian bi**h”—is less obvious. Even if this comment too was (minimally) pertinent to Bedford's cooperation with treatment, as Defendants argue, its prejudicial effect “needs little explanation.” United States v. Hazelwood, 979 F.3d 398, 412 (6th Cir. 2020). But we will not second-guess the district court's decision to allow in this one isolated comment as part of Nurse Soest's overall narrative on her interactions with Bedford. Cf. id. at 412–13 (finding abuse of discretion under Rule 403 where jury heard “absurdly offensive” onslaught of racial and other obscenities over eight minutes of recordings).

The district court did not let in Nurse Soest's testimony wholesale: it disallowed her from offering opinion testimony about Bedford's medical conditions, and asked the jury to disregard her comment about the police report she filed against Bedford. That a different decisionmaker might reasonably have struck a different balance on which portions of Nurse Soest's testimony to admit and which to keep out is not a reason to reverse under Rule 403. Agushi, 196 F.3d at 761. We find no abuse of discretion in the district court's evidentiary rulings as to Nurse Soest.

C. CPD's Use-of-Force Model

Bedford's third challenge goes to the district court's decision to admit evidence of CPD's use-of-force model: namely, testimony from Officer DeWitt about his training in the model, and a color-coded graphic of the model provided for the jury as a demonstrative exhibit. CPD's use-of-force model taxonomizes acceptable uses of force in response to escalating threat levels from “cooperative” to “passive resister,” “active resister,” and finally “assailant” and “assailant deadly force.” At trial, Officer DeWitt claimed that he “deescalated” against Bedford by using a level of force appropriate for an “active resister” even though her actions were consistent with those of an “assailant.” Bedford now contends that the defense's use of the model at trial confused the jury by leading them to assess DeWitt's actions against CPD's standards, rather than the Fourth Amendment's.

We held in Thompson v. City of Chicago that an internal police policy like CPD's use-of-force model was “irrelevant” in determining “the reasonableness of an officer's use of force” under the Constitution. 472 F.3d 444, 455 (7th Cir. 2006) (citing Whren v. United States, 517 U.S. 806, 815 (1996)). But we later clarified that Thompson did not establish “a rule that evidence of police policy or procedure will never be relevant to the objective-reasonableness inquiry.” United States v. Brown, 871 F.3d 532, 537 (7th Cir. 2017). Evidence of an officer's degree of compliance with policies on the use of force can, for example, speak to the officer's mental state at the time of the challenged action. Id. at 538.

The district court's admission of evidence about CPD's use-of-force model was a straightforward application of our holdings in Thompson and Brown. By requesting punitive damages, Bedford put Officer DeWitt's mental state squarely at issue for her excessive-force claim. The jury was entitled to hear about his training on CPD's views of acceptable uses of force to determine whether he acted with “evil motive” or “reckless or callous indifference” in using force on Bedford. Green v. Howser, 942 F.3d 772, 781 (7th Cir. 2019) (citing Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30, 56 (1983)). And the district court appropriately mitigated any prejudice by instructing the jury under Thompson that “you're ․ going to be the ones to determine whether excessive force was used. So [Officer DeWitt] can describe his actions as they comported with his training ․ but in the end, the ultimate decision is yours.” Because “[w]e assume that jurors follow the instructions they are given,” we find no error in the district court's evidentiary rulings on CPD's use-of-force model. Manuel v. City of Chicago, 335 F.3d 592, 597 (7th Cir. 2003) (citation omitted).

D. Audio from Videos of Incident

We next consider—and reject—Bedford's argument that the district court reversibly erred in excluding the audio from video footage of the Big City Tap incident.

Bedford devotes much of her effort on appeal to rebutting the district court's ruling that the bystander statements in these videos were inadmissible hearsay. But this is beside the point. We can accept for the sake of argument that the statements—“Why you slam her like that?” and “She's having a seizure”—were admissible either as present-sense impressions under Rule 803(1), or excited utterances under Rule 803(2). Regardless, the exclamations were still subject to Rule 403 balancing. Mister v. Northeast Illinois Commuter Railroad Corp., 571 F.3d 696, 699 (7th Cir. 2009).

Perhaps the jurors might have gleaned some probative value from hearing the bystanders' contemporaneous evaluations of Officer DeWitt's use of force. But the district court reasonably found this value substantially outweighed by the prejudicial effect of the shocked and emotional reactions, and the unverified medical conclusions, of unknown bystanders. Cf. Abernathy v. Superior Hardwoods, Inc., 704 F.2d 963, 968 (7th Cir. 1983) (affirming exclusion of video recording's audio track under Rule 403). We thus find no abuse of discretion in the district court's exclusion of the audio tracks.

E. Evidence of Officer DeWitt's Prior Uses of Force

Bedford also challenges the district court's exclusion of evidence about Officer DeWitt's prior uses of force on civilians. Again, we find no abuse of discretion.

In her motion in limine, Bedford sought to question Officer DeWitt on ten prior use-of-force reports that he authored, most of which involved Black civilians. On appeal, Bedford reiterates that this evidence should have been admitted under Rule 404(b)(2)'s allowance of other “bad acts” evidence to show DeWitt's “motive,” “intent,” or “absence of mistake” in using force on her.

We need not address whether this racial-bias theory passes muster under Rule 404(b); the district court did not err in excluding the evidence anyway under Rule 403. Manuel, 335 F.3d at 596–97. Evidence of Officer DeWitt's prior uses of force could have distracted the jury with “a series of mini-trials” on irrelevant facts, and invited them to improperly punish DeWitt over conduct for which he was not on trial. Id. As before, the district court struck a careful balance by admitting some aspects of Officer DeWitt's prior disciplinary history (like a prior incident in which he failed to activate his camera) while excluding others it found too prejudicial. We find no abuse of discretion in the district court's exclusion of Officer DeWitt's prior uses of force.

* * *

Because we find no error in any of the district court's evidentiary rulings, we also reject Bedford's argument that the “cumulative effect” of “several errors” warrants reversal. Barber, 725 F.3d at 715 (citation omitted).

There is no doubt that some of the evidence presented at trial cast Bedford in a negative light—just as other evidence did the same for Officer DeWitt, Plewa, and others involved in the regrettable incident at the heart of this case. But “most relevant evidence is, by its very nature, prejudicial.” Lange v. City of Oconto, 28 F.4th 825, 844 (7th Cir. 2022) (citation omitted). The district court made its best assessment of how to manage this evidence, allowing the jury to reach its conclusion.

III. Conclusion

For the reasons stated above, we AFFIRM.

FOOTNOTES

1.   We read this reference to “secondary gain” to mean the potential legal and financial benefits of injury. See Stedman's Medical Dictionary 359000 (updated Nov. 2014) (defining “secondary gain” as “interpersonal or social advantages ․ gained indirectly from organic illness”); Nichols v. American National Insurance Co., 154 F.3d 875, 882 (8th Cir. 1998) (recounting an expert's definition of “secondary gain” as “the possibility that claimed psychological symptoms are motivated by financial gain ․ [such as] in litigation where money is sought”).

2.   The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (“DSM”) does not define “malingering” as a medical diagnosis, but rather a condition that “may be a focus of clinical attention.” See American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 834–35 (5th ed. text revision 2022). Its “essential feature” is “the intentional production of false or grossly exaggerated physical or psychological symptoms, motivated by external incentives.” Id. at 835.

3.   Dr. Shepard's expert report did not mention the concept of “malingering” or directly opine that Bedford herself was “malingering,” as the City Defendants represented to the district court at the pretrial conference. We caution litigants against attempting to back-door undisclosed expert testimony in this way. A party using a retained expert is required to provide, prior to trial, a report containing “a complete statement of all opinions the witness will express and the basis and reasons for them.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(a)(2)(B)(i). And any information not so disclosed may not be used at trial. Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(c)(1). But Bedford never objected to the malingering testimony as undisclosed. Any such objection is therefore waived or forfeited. See Thomas v. Carmichael, 164 F.4th 1058, 1066 (7th Cir. 2026).

4.   While Bedford's counsel alluded to an argument during the pretrial conference that Dr. Shepard was not qualified to discuss psychiatric conditions because he is a neurologist, Bedford has not clearly articulated a qualifications (or, for that matter, methodology) challenge under Rule 702 either below or on appeal. She has thus waived or forfeited any objection to Dr. Shepard's qualifications or methodology. See Thomas, 164 F.4th at 1066.

KOLAR, Circuit Judge.