Plaintiffs’ Product Liability Expert Opinions Scrutinized By Federal Courts

Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee and the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska issued opinions addressing challenges to proffered plaintiffs’ expert testimony in product liability cases.  In the Nebraska case, which involved injuries sustained from a fall off a ladder, the court excluded the plaintiff’s expert opinion that the fall was caused by a failure of the metal rivets in the ladder.  In the Tennessee case, the court rejected the defendant motorcycle manufacturer’s challenge to the plaintiff’s expert’s opinions regarding an alleged manufacturing defect in the motorcycle’s steering components.

Neither expert possessed academic qualifications in the relevant field of expertise, but the distinction between the two experts related to their expertise gained from practical experience.  The ladder expert, for example, had only taken one undergraduate course in metallurgical sciences but was proffered to provide a metallurgical opinion despite conceding that he did not know the actual metallurgical composition of the ladder or the rivets in question.  Moreover, the Tennessee federal court concluded that his testimony would be unreliable, as the expert’s experiences are “essentially devoid of any research performed in this area, and it certainly appears that, if not for this case, Dr. [ ] would have never evaluated the metallurgical characteristics of rivets in ladders.”

In contrast, the Nebraska federal court allowed the plaintiff’s proffered expert’s testimony.  This expert had no professional engineering experience related to motorcycle design nor any professional experience directly related to motorcycle repair or engineering.  Since 1965, however, he had been a motorcycle enthusiast with extensive knowledge of motorcycle systems and steering defects and had previously testified as an expert in product liability cases involving motorcycle steering defects.