Category: Evidence

Listen Up Class: The Role of Daubert at the Class Certification Stage in the Ninth Circuit

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Class certification is the feature fight of any putative class action lawsuit. If granted, it can multiply the stakes of a case several hundred- or thousand-fold. If denied, it can signal the end of the litigation. Because of its importance, parties often invest heavily in the class certification fight, including by offering – and challenging – expert testimony.

As this trend has become more common, more focus has been devoted to answering a key question – to what extent should Rule 702 apply at this critical juncture? A number of circuits have held that Rule 702 applies in full force and that opinions deemed inadmissible under Rule 702 should not be considered in regard to class certification; others, such as the Ninth Circuit, have taken a somewhat different approach. Recently, the Southern District of California, in Stewart v. Quest Diagnostics Clinical Labs., Inc., 2022 WL 5236821 (S.D. Cal. Oct. 5, 2022), weighed in on this question.

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Experts’ Disagreement with Medical Literature Leads to Exclusion

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Peer-reviewed literature can be a powerful tool in attacking an opposing expert’s opinions.  A solid, on-point article can do more than merely satisfy several of the so-called Daubert factors for assessing reliability – by showing a court that others in a challenged expert’s field disagree with his or her opinions, literature can remove any expert “aura” that might discourage a lay judge from discharging his or her duty as a gatekeeper.  Presenting literature that directly undermines the expert’s opinion can make the difference between winning and losing a motion to exclude, especially where the expert’s opinion is not supported by other literature accepted in the field.

A recent example is U.G. v. United States, 2022 WL 7426212 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 13, 2022), a medical malpractice action under the Federal Tort Claims Act in which plaintiff suffered a shoulder injury during his birth and was later diagnosed with permanent Erb’s palsy, or brachial plexus injury.  He alleged that the obstetrician caused the injury by using excessive force on his head and shoulders during delivery.  In support of his claims, he offered two causation experts – an obstetrician/gynecologist and a pediatric neurologist– both of whom claimed the “totality of the circumstances” ruled out several possible alternate causes and thus showed that the defendant caused the injury.

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Ipse Dixit – It’s Not Just for Analytical Gaps Anymore

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There are few legal phrases more fun to say than “ipse dixit.” The phrase is most commonly used in motions to exclude experts who base their opinions on nothing more than their own say so.  As the Court noted in General Electric Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136 (1997), an ipse dixit – Latin for “he said it himself” – leaves an impermissible “analytical gap” between the expert’s opinion and the facts on which it is based.  But ipse dixit arguments can and should stretch beyond just the “basis” part of the expert argument. Courts should also exclude experts who provide unsupported and self-serving testimony to suggest that their method is accepted generally in the community.

That is precisely what happened in Knepfle v. J-Tech Corporation, 2022 WL 4232598, — F.4th — (11th Cir. 2022).  Plaintiff was injured in a motor vehicle accident when she ran her motorcycle into the side of a vehicle that had turned in front of her, causing her to be thrown from the motorcycle.  Although the helmet she was wearing protected her head during the initial impact with the other vehicle, she alleged that it came off and failed to protect her head when it struck the pavement.  She brought product liability claims against multiple defendants in the manufacturing and distributing chain of the helmet.

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Pathologist Stopped Short of Offering Could-Have, Should-Have Opinions

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In personal injury and wrongful death cases, the plaintiff bears the burden of proving medical causation, which almost universally requires testimony from a competent expert.  Some plaintiffs offer testimony from forensic pathologists—also known as medical examiners, or physicians specializing in postmortem cause-of-death determinations—to prove causation.  These forensic pathologists (or the parties proffering their testimony) may push evidentiary boundaries with respect to opinions corollary to their cause of death determinations. While some courts have allowed juries to hear these questionable corollary opinions, relying on cross examination to level the playing field, others have excluded such testimony on the basis of insufficient qualifications or lack of reliable methodology.  Recently, the Southern District of Georgia excluded a forensic pathologist’s opinions on both grounds in a wrongful death action. Although not a product liability case, the court’s well-reasoned holding is sure to affect product cases going forward.

In Griffin v. Coffee County et al., 2022 WL 2045650 (S.D. Ga. June 7, 2022), a man in custody at a county jail in Georgia died from a methamphetamine overdose. His estate brought claims for deprivation of rights and medical malpractice against the jail, the hospital, and various individuals associated with those entities. In support of its claims, the estate proffered testimony from a forensic pathologist who offered opinions about medical treatment.

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Expert’s Failure to Identify Product Defect in Pressure Cooker or Inadequacy in Warnings Leads to Summary Judgment

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It is axiomatic that a plaintiff must offer evidentiary support for each element of her claim in order to survive summary judgment. And a ubiquitous feature of product liability actions is the use of expert witnesses by both sides. These principles are, of course, related – the plaintiff usually must offer expert testimony in order to make a prima facie case, and the defense then attacks that prima facie case through expert testimony. But sometimes a plaintiff loses sight of the connection and, despite retaining an expert, fails to elicit the opinions she needs to make her case. As a recent decision from the Western District of Wisconsin illustrates, it pays for a defendant to carefully evaluate whether a plaintiff has checked all of the necessary boxes.

In Moore v. National Presto Industries, Inc., 2022 WL 1555875 (W.D. Wis. May 17, 2022), Plaintiff alleged that she was injured when she opened her pressure cooker while it was still pressurized, ejecting its contents onto her arm, causing burns. Plaintiff sued the cooker’s manufacturer, asserting strict liability claims for design defect and failure to warn as well as a claim for negligence. Defendant moved for summary judgment on each of these claims.

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It’s not what happened, but why: First Circuit rejects conclusory, unsupported expert opinions

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It is not uncommon for an opposing expert to opine that the existence of injury alone implies negligence, nor is it unusual to find that such opinions are supported only by general reliance on “literature” with no discernible connection to the issue at hand. Certainly, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(2)(B) requires an expert’s report to contain “a complete statement of all opinions the witness will express and the basis and reasons for them.” And, Federal Rule of Evidence 702 requires that an expert not only base an opinion on sufficient facts or data but also reliably apply his or her methodology to those facts or data. Yet all too often, courts decline to hold an expert to task and instead find that these deficiencies go to the weight, but not the admissibility, of an expert’s opinion. But, as recently observed by the First Circuit, an expert must do more than merely cite the existence of an injury if a res ipsa loquitur argument is not available. And regardless, an expert’s failure to link the literature cited to the opinions offered is not a matter of insufficiency, but rather of unreliability.

In López-Ramírez v. Toledo-González, — F.4th —, 2022 WL 1261299 (1st Cir. 2022), Plaintiff experienced hearing loss, facial paralysis and loss of balance following a neurosurgical procedure performed by the defendant neurosurgeon. Plaintiff sued the physician and the hospital, alleging that the defendant neurosurgeon’s failure to properly evaluate, treat and monitor her condition during the surgery amounted to medical malpractice. In support of that claim, Plaintiff disclosed a neurology expert who opined that the defendant neurosurgeon deviated from the standard of care and included with his report articles from the medical literature that he felt “may be helpful” in understanding his opinions.

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