Guidroz-Brault v. Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, GUIDROZ-BRAULT
Decision Date | 13 February 2001 |
Docket Number | No. 99-16458,DEFENDANTS-APPELLEES,GUIDROZ-BRAULT,PLAINTIFFS-APPELLANTS,99-16458 |
Citation | 254 F.3d 825 |
Parties | (9th Cir. 2001) LORI; FREDERICK BRAULT; JOYCE MATTHEWS; BRYNN C. MATTHEWS; WENDY STODDARD, INDIVIDUALLY, AND AS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE CLASS OF THOSE SIMILARLY SITUATED, AND AS PARENT OF SEAN STODDARD AND DUSTIN STODDARD, MINOR,, v. MISSOURI PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY; UNITED PACIFIC RAILROAD COMPANY, A DELAWARE CORPORATION; SOUTHERN PACIFIC TRANSPORTATION COMPANY, AKA SOUTHERN PACIFIC TRANSPORTATION COMPANY; NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION, DBA AMTRAK, |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
James P. Watts, Zimmerman Reed, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the plaintiffs-appellants.
William L. Thorpe, Mark H. Brain, Fennemore Craig, Phoenix, Arizona, for the defendants-appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Arizona Robert C. Broomfield, District Judge, Presiding D.C. No. CV 97-02038-RCB
Before: Alfred T. Goodwin, Procter Hug, Jr., and William A. Fletcher, Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge Goodwin
Passengers who suffered injuries in a train wreck appeal the summary judgment that terminated their action. The first question is whether the trial court erred in deciding that defendant National Passenger Railroad Corporation (commonly known as "Amtrak") was not negligent, as a matter of law, because the criminal act of sabotage in creating a defect in the rail was an unforeseeable intervening, superseding act, and the sole cause of the train wreck. The second question is whether the court abused its discretion in excluding the affidavits of plaintiffs' experts, without which the plaintiffs had no proof of negligence on the part of Amtrak. We affirm.
At approximately 1:23 a.m. MST on October, 9, 1995, an Amtrak passenger train derailed in the Arizona desert, near Milepost 846.86, on a track then owned and maintained by Southern Pacific Transportation Company.1
It is undisputed that the derailment was the result of a purposeful act of sabotage by one or more unknown persons. Physical evidence at the scene indicated that unknown individuals had deliberately removed the bolts and spikes holding the south rail in place. Two angle bars that hold the rails together had been removed. They were later found near the point of derailment ("POD"). The loosened rail was driven ahead by derailed wheels and was found lying 20 feet ahead of the POD. No evidence of the amount of lateral displacement of the rail before impact survived the force of the derailing. Likewise, no physical evidence revealed what signs of a defective roadbed, if any, would have been visible to the train crew prior to impact, assuming that the crew had been keeping a proper lookout as the locomotive approached the POD. The crew depositions contain the only evidence in the record about the quality of the lookout.
The saboteurs had taken deliberate pains to conceal their efforts. The track on which the derailment occurred was equipped with an electric warning system designed to illuminate a red light if the current flowing through the rail was interrupted at any point between "block" signals. Because angle bars holding the ends of the rails togther do not conduct the electric current adequately, a bond wire is connected to the ends of the rails and runs between them under the connecting angle bars to ensure that the warning circuit is complete. The saboteurs had circumvented the system and rewired it so that the block signal would continue to show a green light after the angle bars had been removed. The last green light that the train crew observed before the train derailed was located approximately 1.5 miles before the POD. The train was moving at approximately 50 miles per hour, a safe speed at the time and place of the event.
Two experienced Amtrak passenger locomotive engineers were in the cab of the lead locomotive. Gean Haffey ("Haffey") was the engineer and Gary Lawrence ("Lawrence") was the assistant engineer. In his deposition, Haffey said that he was "rolling the train"--inspecting the train as it rounded the corner by looking in the mirror or looking back through the window to make sure that the train was in normal condition. The Lawrence deposition contains two, possibly conflicting, statements concerning his actions immediately preceding the derailment. At one point, he testified that he was looking ahead through the windscreen. At another point, he testified that he was completing calculations on a projected arrival time when the train derailed. The quality of lookout maintained by the crew in this case is obviously relevant on the issue of negligence, but its materiality depends upon the existence of evidence that some visible sign of a defective track could have been seen if a perfect lookout had been kept at all times.
The train consisted of two engine units and twelve cars. Both engines and eight of the cars left the track. The POD was remote and inaccessible by paved roads. After the wreck, government agents, railroad investigators, and other experts visited the scene, inspected the mutilation of the roadbed, and prepared reports. The evidence showed that, pursuant to Federal Railroad Administration regulations, a qualified track inspector had twice inspected the track near Milepost 846.86 in the week before the derailment, and a tie plate at milepost 846.82 was replaced on October 5, 1995. There was no evidence of any defect in the track or roadbed prior to the separation of the rails by the sabotage. A report prepared by the former Southern Pacific Regional Engineer, Maintenance of Way, David Wickersham, was filed as an exhibit. The report described the scene at the POD as of 6:30 a.m. following the wreck. It also included photographs showing the debris left on the roadbed after the train left the track.
The complaint claimed that the defendant railroads failed to: (a) properly inspect, maintain, and repair the tracks; (b) modernize the tracks with "continuously welded rail;" (c) establish a proper speed limit; and (d) monitor the rails at the point of derailment. They claimed that Amtrak failed to: (a) slow to an appropriate speed; (b) keep a proper lookout; (c) properly train its engine crew; (d) properly inspect the rails; and (e) provide crashworthy cars.
Defendants moved for summary judgment on all claims. The district court granted the motion, holding: (a) plaintiffs had abandoned all claims except the negligence claim arising out of the operation of the train in the moments before derailment; (b) the negligence claim failed as a matter of law because the saboteurs' criminal act was an unforeseeable intervening, superseding cause; and (c) the plaintiffs' proffered expert testimony in support of their negligence claim was inadmissible as speculative and not sufficiently reliable. Plaintiffs have limited their appeal to the issue of negligence on the part of Amtrak and the district court's rejection of their proffered expert testimony.
We review de novo the evidence evaluated by the summary judgment court in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. See Berry v. Valence Tech., Inc., 175 F.3d 699, 703 (9th Cir. 1999). Like the trial court, we must draw all reasonable inferences supported by the evidence in favor of the nonmoving party and then decide whether any genuine issues of material fact exist, and whether the district court correctly applied the relevant substantive law. See id. A fact issue is genuine "if the evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict for the nonmoving party." Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). "A grant of summary judgment may be sustained on any basis supported by the record." Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 43 F.3d 1311, 1314 (9th Cir. 1995).
Assuming, arguendo, that the saboteurs' criminal act did not "supersede" the alleged negligence of Amtrak, the crucial question is whether, if both engineers had been keeping a proper lookout, under all the circumstances then existing, they would have seen anything to cause them to take remedial action.
To survive summary judgment the plaintiffs have the burden to produce some evidence, other than speculation or guesswork, that something was present at the POD to be seen by crewmen keeping a proper lookout. It is at this point that the plaintiffs' case failed. Apart from the proffered expert testimony, the record contains no evidence that a better lookout would have discovered a visible defect in the track in time to avoid the derailment.
The plaintiffs offered the affidavits of three experts. The court excluded the proposed testimony of all three. Plaintiffs contend that the district court mishandled its gatekeeping function for the admission of testimony offered under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 as set forth in Kumho Tire Co., LTD v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999) and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).
In Daubert, the Court charged trial judges with the responsibility of acting as gatekeepers to " `ensure that any and all scientific testimony . . . is not only relevant, but reliable,' " and the Court in Kumho Tire clarified that this gatekeeper function applies to all expert testimony, not just testimony based in science. See Kumho Tire, 526 U.S. at 147 (quoting Daubert, 509 U.S. at 589). Rule 702, which governs the admissibility of expert opinion testimony, states: "If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or...
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