Clay v. Ford Motor Company

• Decision Date: 17 September 1999
• Docket Number: No. 98-4230,98-4230
• Citation: 215 F.3d 663
• Parties: (6th Cir. 2000) Dolores Clay, as Administratrix of the Estate of Kathleen P. Clay; John D. Strom, as Administrator of the Estate of Christopher J. Strom, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Ford Motor Company, a Delaware Corporation, Defendant-Appellant, William R. Slonsky, Third Party Defendant-Appellee. Argued:
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

Page 663

215 F.3d 663 (6th Cir. 2000)

Dolores Clay, as Administratrix of the Estate of Kathleen P. Clay; John D. Strom, as Administrator of the Estate of Christopher J. Strom Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Ford Motor Company, a Delaware Corporation, Defendant-Appellant, William R. Slonsky, Third Party Defendant-Appellee.

No. 98-4230

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT

Argued: September 17, 1999

Decided and Filed: June 28, 2000

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio at Akron; Nos. 96-02127; 96-02128--David D. Dowd, Jr., District Judge. [Copyrighted Material Omitted] Andrew M. Kaplan, Daniel J. Buckley, VORYS, SATER, SEYMOUR & PEASE, Cincinnati, Ohio, Anthony Tuccillo, Akron, Ohio, Edgar P. Heiskell III, Charleston, West Virginia, Martin J. McGetrick, CHANDLER, FRANKLIN & O'BRYAN, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellees.

Elizabeth B. Wright, Michael E. Smith, THOMPSON, HINE & FLORY, Cleveland, Ohio, Craig A. Morgan, BROWN, McCARROLL & OAKS HARTLINE, L.L.P., Austin, Texas, for Appellant.

Charles E. Grisi, Grisi & Riegler, Akron, Ohio, for Third Party Defendant-Appellee

Before: RYAN, MOORE, and GIBSON,^* Circuit Judges.

GIBSON, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which MOORE, J., joined. RYAN, J. (pp.674-77), delivered a separate dissenting opinion.

OPINION

JOHN R. GIBSON, Circuit Judge.

Ford Motor Company appeals from a judgment on a jury verdict that the Ford Bronco II has a design defect that proximately caused the deaths of Kathleen Clay and Christopher Strom and injury to William Slonsky. Ford argues that the district court erred by denying its motions for judgment as a matter of law and a new trial. Ford also argues that the admission of the testimony of Dr. Melvin Richardson, the appellees'¹ expert witness, was error, as was the grant of prejudgment interest to the Clay and Strom estates. We affirm.

Slonsky was driving a 1988 two-wheel drive Bronco II north on Interstate 77 in Ohio on a Sunday night. In the front passenger seat was Sean Lance, the vehicle's owner,² and in the back seat were Clay and Strom. The four friends were headed to a club in Cleveland. Slonsky was apparently the designated driver; Lance had taken LSD and asked him to drive. Slonsky had never driven the Bronco II before that night, although he did drive it to a gas station to get cigarettes prior to leaving for the club.

Slonsky was driving 53 to 65 miles per hour in the middle lane of three lanes when he noticed a fast-moving car behind him. To avoid the faster car, he moved into the right lane. Once there, he observed that the car in front of him was slowing down, so he returned to the center lane. At that point, he felt the vehicle "jerk" or "overcorrect" to the left, and he responded by turning the steering wheel back to the right. At some point while trying to regain control of the vehicle, he may have turned the steering wheel as much as a full revolution.

The vehicle turned sideways, its passenger-side wheel rims leaving gouge marks in the pavement for approximately fifteen feet. It rolled two and three-quarters or three and three-quarters times, coming to rest on the driver's side about 235 feet from the end of the gouges. Clay and Strom, who were not wearing seatbelts, were ejected during the rollover; Clay died at the scene and Strom died at the hospital soon after. Slonsky and Lance, who had been wearing seatbelts, were able to climb out the passenger-side window. At the hospital, Slonsky tested negative for drugs and alcohol.

Dolores Clay and John Strom sued Ford on behalf of their children's estates in this diversity product liability action. Ford asserted third-party claims for indemnity and contribution against Slonsky, who then brought a counterclaim against Ford. After an extensive trial on liability, the jury found that the Bronco II has a design defect and that the defect proximately caused the deaths of Clay and Strom and the injuries to Slonsky. The jury rejected Ford's affirmative defenses of superseding cause and, as to Slonsky, assumption of the risk. After the damages phase of the trial, the jury awarded compensatory damages totaling $17.5 million, but found that the appellees were not entitled to punitive damages. Dolores Clay, John Strom, and Slonsky consented to remittiturs totaling $7 million after the district court ruled on the post-trial motions and awarded prejudgment interest to the Clay and Strom estates.

Ford asserts that the appellees failed to present substantial evidence that the Bronco II has a design defect that caused this particular accident and that the verdict was against the weight of the evidence. Ford also argues that the district court erred by admitting Richardson's testimony and by awarding prejudgment interest.

I.

We first consider Ford's argument that the district court should have excluded Richardson's testimony. We review a district court's decision to admit or exclude expert testimony for abuse of discretion, see General Elec. Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 138-139 (1997), finding it only if we are firmly convinced that the district court erred, see Greenwell v. Boatwright, 184 F.3d 492, 495 (6th Cir. 1999). Deference to the district court's decisions "is the hallmark of abuse of discretion review." Joiner, 522 U.S. at 143. This is a close case, but after careful review of the record, we are not firmly convinced that the court abused its discretion by allowing Richardson to testify.

Prior to trial, Ford submitted a motion in limine to exclude or limit Richardson's testimony, alleging that his opinions did not meet the requirements for expert testimony. Ford requested a hearing on its motion. Finding that Ford's motion was predicated on a ruling made almost three months earlier by a district court in West Virginia and that Ford had shown no good cause for waiting to file the motion until one week before the start of trial, the court denied its request for a hearing. Having been alerted to Ford's objections, the court indicated that it might conduct its own voir dire of Richardson before he testified.

District court judges must determine whether an expert's testimony is both relevant and reliable when ruling on its admission. See United States v. Jones, 107 F.3d 1147, 1156 (6th Cir. 1997). In Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999), the Supreme Court confirmed what we held in Jones: the general gatekeeping obligation set forth in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), applies when considering all expert testimony, including testimony based on technical and other specialized knowledge. See Kumho Tire, 526 U.S. at 141. It further held that the specific Daubert factors--testing, peer review and publication, potential rate of error, and general acceptance in the relevant community--may be considered by the district court even when the proffered expert testimony is not scientific³. See id. Whether these specific factors are "reasonable measures of reliability in a particular case is a matter that the law grants the trial judge broad latitude to determine." Id. at 153.

Although the district court did not explicitly recite that Richardson's testimony was relevant and reliable, its rulings indicate that it made that determination. Ford's motion in limine squarely raised the issue of reliability. Ford made a variety of objections throughout Richardson's testimony, including a continuing objection to his ability to offer opinions with respect to accident reconstruction, and at the conclusion of the appellees' case, Ford moved to strike Richardson's testimony in its entirety. We conclude, based on the district court's rulings on the motions and objections, that the court determined Richardson's testimony was relevant and reliable.

The district court is not obligated to hold a Daubert hearing, and in the absence of a hearing, "we must review the record to determine whether the district court erred in its assessment of the relevance and reliability of the expert testimony." Greenwell, 184 F.3d at 498. Having undertaken that review, we agree that Richardson's testimony was relevant to the issues in this case. He testified regarding the alleged defects in the Bronco II, and he reconstructed the accident. Ford's sole challenge to Richardson's testimony is that it was not reliable. Our inquiry focuses on the methodology and principles used by Richardson, not on his conclusions. See Daubert, 509 U.S. at 595.

The court qualified Richardson as an expert in the fields of mechanical engineering, machine design, vehicle dynamics, and accident reconstruction⁴. Richardson has an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering, masters degrees in both mechanical engineering (with an emphasis in machine design) and applied mathematics, and a doctoral degree in engineering mechanics. He taught at Clemson University for twenty years in the fields of mechanical engineering, machine design, dynamics, engineering mechanics, and stress analysis.

Richardson testified that a quarter or a third of the full-time consulting work he has done since 1985 has been in accident reconstruction, with the majority being reconstruction of automobile accidents. He spends the remainder of his consulting time generally in the field of machine design, looking at the process by which a machine is designed and determining whether the machine is suitable and safe for certain purposes. On a couple of occasions, Ford has retained Richardson to consult and provide opinions.

Richardson testified that dynamics, or the analysis of the forces that produce motion in objects, can be used to analyze vehicles and parts of machines and that accident reconstruction is simply an application of dynamics. To reconstruct accidents, Richardson looks at the physical and factual information available, applies standard engineering principles to this information, and determines the most probable sequence of events.

Richardson has...