Expert Not Allowed To Testify That Product’s Modifications Were Made “Recently”

In 2010, a worker using a rubber injection mold press had to have his left hand amputated after having it caught while operating the press.  The worker brought suit against the company who used the machine from 1995 to 2007, prior to selling it to his employer, on the grounds that this previous company had disabled the safety systems of the press.  All of the experts in the case essentially agreed that the machine’s safety systems—strips that retract the front doors of the press if they sense an obstruction, and limit switches that caused the doors to immediately re-open if they did not fully close—had been disabled and contributed to the accident.  The experts disagreed, however, with respect to when these modifications were made and which company made them.

The defendant company’s expert witness offered the opinion in his report “that these modifications to the subject safety systems were conducted recently.”  The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan precluded the expert from testifying to this effect, finding that this opinion was too imprecise and unspecific to assist the jury in determining when the modifications were made.  At the expert’s deposition, he opined that “recently” meant within the last five years, but the purported expert did not offer any analysis about how he arrived at this opinion other than just looking at the machine.  The court also emphasized that the expert had never before been asked to estimate the length of time a part was in use, and had never performed any analysis to determine the age of a component for this type of machine prior to this case.  The expert acknowledged that there were methods of determining the age of a part that were not done in this case.  The court concluded that the expert could not testify that the modifications were performed “recently” or within the last five years.