Being an Expert Expert Doesn’t Make You an Expert

You know him well. He is the professional expert. No matter the issue, the case, or the product, there he is, opining that your client’s product is unreasonably dangerous, and unquestionably caused the plaintiff to suffer personal injuries, psychological damage, and lost income. In fact, as soon as you see this expert’s name at the top of the report, you can recite its contents, eyes closed and one hand tied behind your back.

Not so fast. In Beam v. McNeilus Truck and Manufacturing, Inc., 697 F. Supp. 2d 1267 (N.D. Ala. 2010), the Northern District of Alabama considered the defendant’s motion to exclude the testimony of Dr. L.D. Ryan, a mechanical engineer and professional expert, as to the defectiveness of the design of a garbage truck. The case involved an accident in which the plaintiff’s decedent, a garbage collector, fell or stepped off of the riding step of a garbage truck and died as a result of his injuries. The central issue of the case was whether the truck was defectively designed with regard to the riding steps.

The court carefully considered Dr. Ryan’s qualifications, noting that “Plaintiff’s expert . . . has little or no experience in the world of refuse collection, road-vehicle design generally, or garbage truck design specifically.” Furthermore, although Dr. Ryan had watched “three hours of videos on ‘YouTube,’ he has no training or experience in designing waste-hauling routes” and has no knowledge “about the history or evolution of rear-loading garbage-truck designs.” In fact, the court stated, the “mere fact that Dr. Ryan is a licensed engineer is, in and of itself, insufficeint to qualitgy him as an expert in this case.”

The court’s harshest criticism of Dr. Ryan’s so-called qualifications, however, was reserved for his status as the professional expert. The court made several references to the fact that Dr. Ryan had acted as an expert in hundreds of cases. In fact, the court devoted an entire footnote to Dr. Ryan’s career expertise, opining that “Dr. Ryan has been involved in hundreds of cases invovling a variety of products, and his testimony has been at issue in a number of those cases,” and providing a list of some of those cases.

With no actual expertise on the subject of garbage truck design, the court excluded Dr. Ryan and his reports. Without expert testimony as to the defective design, the plaintiff could not make her case, and therefore the defendant’s motion for summary judgment was also granted.

Bravo, Northern District of Alabama. Abnormal Use salutes you. Next time, plaintiffs, make sure your expert does more than watch YouTube.

Comments are closed.