Gareis v. 3M Co.
| Decision Date | 17 August 2021 |
| Docket Number | No. 18-3553, No. 18-3580,18-3553 |
| Citation | 9 F.4th 812 |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit |
| Parties | Louis GAREIS; Lillian Gareis Plaintiffs - Appellants v. 3M COMPANY; Arizant Healthcare, Inc. Defendants - Appellees Louis Gareis; Lillian Gareis Plaintiffs - Appellees v. 3M Company; Arizant Healthcare, Inc. Defendants - Appellants |
Gabriel A. Assaad, McDonald & Worley, Kyle W. Farrar, Farrar & Ball, Houston, TX, Michael Vincent Ciresi, Michael A. Sacchet, Jan Marie Conlin, Ciresi & Conlin, Wilbur W. Fluegel, Fluegel Law Office, Genevieve M. Zimmerman, Meshbesher & Spence, Minneapolis, MN, Ben W. Gordon, Jr., Levin & Papantonio, Pensacola, FL, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Jerry Blackwell, Corey L. Gordon, Benjamin Winters Hulse, Mary S. Young, Blackwell & Burke, Minneapolis, MN, Jeffrey Justman, Joshua N. Turner, Aaron Daniel Van Oort, M. Joseph Winebrenner, Faegre & Drinker, Minneapolis, MN, Scott Dennis Provencher, Mitchell & Williams, Little Rock, AR, Lyn Peoples Pruitt, DLA Piper LLP (US), Dallas, TX, for Defendant-Appellee
Before GRUENDER, KELLY, and GRASZ, Circuit Judges.
Louis and Lillian Gareis are plaintiffs whose case is part of the Bair Hugger multidistrict litigation ("MDL") against 3M Company and Arizant Healthcare, Inc. (collectively, "3M"). See In re Bair Hugger Forced Air Warming Devices Prods. Liab. Litig. , MDL No. 15-2666 (JNE/DTS), 2019 WL 4394812, at *2 (D. Minn. July 31, 2019). The district court1 granted 3M summary judgment on the Gareises’ failure-to-warn claim, and a jury returned a verdict for 3M on the Gareises’ strict-liability design-defect claim. After the district court entered final judgment in their case, the Gareises appealed, challenging the summary-judgment decision and three evidentiary rulings. For the following reasons, we affirm.2
In December 2015, the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation centralized the In re Bair Hugger Forced Air Warming Devices Products Liability Litigation in the district court for coordinated pretrial proceedings. The Gareises eventually filed a complaint as part of the MDL. They alleged that Louis Gareis underwent hip-replacement surgery in South Carolina, during which he was kept warm with a Bair Hugger, a convective patient-warming device applied to patients during operations to stave off hypothermia-related complications. The Gareises claimed that use of the Bair Hugger caused him to develop a periprosthetic joint infection
("PJI"). The Gareises asserted numerous state-law causes of action against 3M, including strict-liability design-defect as well as failure-to-warn under both negligence and strict-liability theories.
3M moved for summary judgment. Applying South Carolina substantive law, the district court granted in part 3M's motion. As relevant here, it granted summary judgment for 3M on the failure-to-warn claim because it found that 3M did not have sufficient actual or constructive knowledge of the Bair Hugger's alleged danger prior to Louis Gareis's surgery to owe a duty to warn. But it denied 3M's motion with respect to the Gareises’ strict-liability design-defect claim, and that claim was the sole claim that went to trial.
The district court made several evidentiary rulings during trial that are relevant here. First, it prohibited the Gareises from introducing evidence of 3M's alleged knowledge of the risks and utility of the Bair Hugger at the time the Bair Hugger used in Louis Gareis's surgery left 3M's control. Second, the court prohibited the Gareises from introducing evidence of various alternative designs to the Bair Hugger that they proffered to support their design-defect claim (though it did allow them to introduce evidence of a patient-warming device called the TableGard as reasonable-alternative-design evidence). Third, over the Gareises’ objection, the district court allowed 3M's expert, Dr. John Abraham, to testify about a computational-fluid-dynamics ("CFD") model he built.
After an approximately two-week trial, the jury returned a special verdict in favor of 3M, finding separately that (1) the Gareises failed to prove that the Bair Hugger was unreasonably dangerous for its intended use and that a reasonable safer alternative design existed, and (2) the Gareises failed to prove that Louis Gareis's PJI would not have occurred but for the use of the Bair Hugger during his surgery. The district court subsequently denied the Gareises’ motion for a new trial. The Gareises appeal, challenging the three aforementioned evidentiary rulings and the grant of summary judgment regarding their failure-to-warn claim.
On appeal, it is undisputed that South Carolina law governs the Gareises’ claims. Federal law governs the evidentiary issues on appeal, see Hirchak v. W.W. Grainger, Inc. , 980 F.3d 605, 608 (8th Cir. 2020), as well as the question whether summary judgment was properly granted, see Hutcherson v. Progressive Corp. , 984 F.2d 1152, 1155 (11th Cir. 1993).
First, we consider the Gareises’ contention that the district court abused its discretion by excluding (1) evidence of 3M's knowledge of the risks and utility of the Bair Hugger and (2) evidence of reasonable alternative designs to the Bair Hugger besides the TableGard. In their motion for a new trial, the Gareises raised these same points. The district court rejected them, concluding that it had not erred in excluding the evidence and that, in any event, the Gareises had not identified any prejudice resulting from the exclusion of this evidence.
We review a district court's evidentiary rulings for an abuse of discretion. Vogt v. State Farm Life Ins. , 963 F.3d 753, 770 (8th Cir. 2020). Further, we will not set aside a verdict or grant a new trial due to an erroneous evidentiary ruling unless that ruling was prejudicial. See id. at 770-71. The burden of showing prejudice rests on the party challenging the evidentiary ruling. Gill v. Maciejewski , 546 F.3d 557, 562 (8th Cir. 2008). To carry this burden, the party must show that the excluded evidence was "of such a critical nature that there is no reasonable assurance that the jury would have reached the same conclusion had the evidence been admitted." See id. (internal quotation marks omitted); Schultz v. McDonnell Douglas Corp. , 105 F.3d 1258, 1259 (8th Cir. 1997) ().
Under South Carolina law, a strict-liability design-defect claim requires proof that (1) "the product, as designed, was in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user when it left the control of the defendant" and (2) "the defect caused his injuries." Madden v. Cox , 284 S.C. 574, 328 S.E.2d 108, 112 (S.C. Ct. App. 1985). Both risk-utility evidence and reasonable-alternative-design evidence bear on the first element. See, e.g. , Newbern v. Ford Motor Co. , 428 S.C. 310, 833 S.E.2d 861, 864 (S.C. Ct. App. 2019) ; Holland ex rel. Knox v. Morbark, Inc. , 407 S.C. 227, 754 S.E.2d 714, 720 (S.C. Ct. App. 2014) .
Although the Gareises argue that the evidence discussed above should have been admitted because it was relevant to the first element of their strict-liability design-defect claim, they fail to show prejudice from its exclusion. The jury returned a special verdict for 3M, finding that the Gareises failed to prove both that the Bair Hugger was defectively designed and that the Bair Hugger caused Louis Gareis's PJI. None of the evidence that the Gareises argue was erroneously excluded is relevant to the second element, causation. And even if it were, the jury heard extensive testimony about the "many different ways" the bacteria causing Louis Gareis's PJI may have entered the site of his hip implant
, resulting in his PJI, besides use of the Bair Hugger during his surgery. These include bacteria on and in his own skin that could have entered the implant site via the surgical incision ; bacteria on surgical staples used during his surgery that could have entered the implant site; bacteria shed from the skin of any one of the medical personnel in his operating room during the surgery that could have reached the implant site regardless of the Bair Hugger's use during his surgery; bacteria transmitted to the implant site by medical personnel's direct contact with it; bacteria in drainage from his wound after the surgery that could have leaked into the implant site; bacteria in his bloodstream obtained from an exposure other than his operation that could have traveled to and infected the implant site; and bacteria from a hip injection he received after his surgery.
The Gareises do not mention this evidence supporting the jury's verdict on the causation issue, let alone explain why, in the face of this evidence, they suffered prejudice from the exclusion of their risk-utility and reasonable-alternative-design evidence. Accordingly, even assuming the risk-utility and reasonable-alternative-design evidence was erroneously excluded, we will not set aside the judgment and remand for a new trial on this basis.
Next, we consider the Gareises’ argument that the district court abused its discretion by allowing 3M's expert Dr. John Abraham to testify about operating-room airflow. This testimony was used to rebut the Gareises’ theory of how the Bair Hugger caused Louis Gareis's PJI. They claim that this testimony should not have been...
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