Wisconsin Federal Court Allows Plaintiff’s Expert To Testify In Portable Heater Explosion Case

Following injuries caused by an exploding tire on a portable heater, a worker brought suit against the company that supplied the portable heater to his employer.  The defendant moved to exclude the plaintiff’s sole liability expert, who opined that the catastrophic nature of the failure mode could have been prevented by using larger nuts and bolts, larger washers or rectangular ones, thicker metal in the tire rims, and pressure-relief valve stems.  The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin denied the defendant’s motion to exclude and a summary judgment motion premised on the expert being excluded.

The court concluded that the expert was qualified to testify about his opinion on the mechanics, qualities, and failures of the split-rim assembly at issue based on his education (as a metallurgist) and work experience.  The court indicated that even though this expert may not be “the most qualified” expert to testify on these subjects, this is not the standard imposed by the Federal Rules.  The court then found that the expert’s methods were scientifically reliable under Daubert, explaining that the expert visited the injury site and talked with personnel regarding the incident, reviewed photographs of the accident site, conducted destructive failure testing to determine the inflation pressures required to fail the two exemplar wheel assemblies provided by the defendant, tested and analyzed the sheet metal used in the split-rim tire assembly and the accompanying nuts and bolts, and proposed a destructive test protocol for the subject split-rim tire assembly to test the strength of the steel split rim (to which the defendant objected).