Lawes v. Csa Architects & Eng'rs LLP
| Decision Date | 18 June 2020 |
| Docket Number | No. 16-2275,16-2275 |
| Citation | 963 F.3d 72 |
| Parties | Grandvill D. LAWES, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. CSA ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS LLP, Defendant, Appellee, Puerto Rico Ports Authority ; Mapfre-Praico Insurance Company; Municipality of San Juan; Constructora Santiago II, Corp.; Rafaela Riviere-Andino; Miguel A. Bonilla, Inc.; Cooperativa De Seguros Multiples De Puerto Rico; Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority; ACE Insurance Co.; Integrand Assurance Company; Q.B. Construction SE; Triple-S Propiedad, Inc. Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit |
Jorge M. Izquierdo San Miguel, with whom Izquierdo San Miguel Law Office, P.S.C. was on brief, for appellant.
Ricardo F. Casellas-Sánchez, with whom Diana Pérez-Seda, Casellas Alcover & Burgos P.S.C., Fernando J. Gierbolini-González, Richard J. Schell, and Monserrate Simonet & Gierbolini, LLC, were on brief, for appellee.
Before Torruella, Lipez, and Thompson, Circuit Judges.
This case involves a construction project, a pedestrian-involved collision, and a twelve-day Daubert hearing that culminated in the exclusion of plaintiff's only expert witness pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 and Federal Rule of Evidence 702. With his expert ousted, plaintiff's negligence case collapsed halfway through trial, and then the district court entered judgment as a matter of law for defendants. The plaintiff has appealed the entry of judgment against him and the district court's evidentiary rulings, which sounded the death knell for his suit under Article 1802 of the Puerto Rico Civil Code. On this voluminous record, even from our deferential perch, we find that the district court erred. So we vacate the lawsuit's dismissal and remand the matter for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
In 2011, plaintiff-appellant Grandvill Lawes was hit by an SUV while walking in a construction-affected area near Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. The facts are drawn from a massive record, including myriad motions and depositions, a 188-page pretrial order, and several weeks of trial.1 We therefore beg the reader's patience as we set the scene and describe the litigation that followed.
Fernández Juncos Avenue ("Fernández Juncos" for short) is an undivided four-lane highway, with two eastbound lanes and two westbound lanes of traffic. Calle Del Tren, a two-lane arterial roadway, lies to the north of Fernández Juncos. These parallel roadways are separated by a cement median. Fernández Juncos runs alongside San Juan Bay, and connects the working waterfront (particularly, for our purposes, Piers 8, 9, and 10) to Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. There is a sidewalk adjacent to the waterfront to the south of Fernández Juncos (the "southern sidewalk"), and there is a sidewalk to the north of Calle Del Tren (the "northern sidewalk"). Before construction, pedestrians, including sailors whose ships are docked at the waterfront piers, could use the sidewalks on either side of the combined roadways to travel into Old San Juan. Using just the southern sidewalk, pedestrians heading into town could walk to the very end of the piers before needing to cross over.2
Around 2010, the Bahía Urbana Pier 7 and 8 Improvement Project, a government-funded construction project meant to beautify the waterfront just outside of Old San Juan, was initiated and, thereafter, significantly changed the landscape of the area. Defendant CSA Architects and Engineers, LLP was hired to draw the plans for the Project. CSA was also responsible for designing a Management of Traffic plan ("MOT") to safely control vehicular and pedestrian traffic in the construction-affected area. Defendant Q.B. Construction, the Project's primary contractor, was tasked with implementing CSA's designs, including the MOT. As instructed by CSA's MOT, Q.B. installed a temporary concrete barrier along the southern sidewalk near the middle of the block (the "midblock barrier"). The midblock barrier closed part of the southern sidewalk -- but only part -- from pedestrian use. The midblock barrier also jutted into Fernández Junco's southernmost eastbound lane of traffic, reducing the width of that lane.
According to defendants (and as designed in the MOT), Spanish-language signs at a permanent, mechanical crosswalk near Pier 9 indicated that the southern sidewalk was partially closed and instructed pedestrians to cross over to the unobstructed northern sidewalk.3 If pedestrians didn't spot the signs, didn't understand them, or chose to ignore them, nothing prevented them from walking along the southern sidewalk until the concrete midblock barrier, nearly 300 feet away from the crosswalk. At that point, they could either walk back to the crosswalk (about 3/4 the length of a football field) and risk walking toward the hot corner or they could jaywalk.4
Lawes was one of several merchant marines docked at San Juan Bay on October 22, 2011, when he and his shipmate, Carlos Gordon, ventured off their ship to grab dinner in Old San Juan. Gordon, who had visited the area prior to construction, normally traveled into town using the southern sidewalk. When Gordon and Lawes reached the recently implemented midblock barrier on the day of the accident, however, they took a detour: they jaywalked across Fernández Juncos and Calle Del Tren, and resumed their trek along the northern sidewalk (a healthy distance away from the "hot corner"). When the sun had set and the street was dark, the pair journeyed back to the piers. They started on the northern sidewalk, which would have led them to a permanent crosswalk back to the piers. They decided to jaywalk a second time.
Lawes took the lead. After successfully crossing Calle Del Tren, he attempted to cross Fernández Juncos. He was standing on the roadway's yellow divider, two eastbound lanes away from the southern sidewalk, when something awful happened: a traffic light changed down the block and cars began rushing toward Lawes from both directions, trapping him on the yellow divider. Seconds later, he was struck head on by a westbound SUV. Lawes is now quadriplegic and will need medical care for the rest of his life. As he tells it, his medical expenses have already reached $10 million.
On June 14, 2012, Lawes filed a negligence-based lawsuit under Article 1802 of the Puerto Rico Civil Code against public and private entities involved in the Bahía Urbana construction project, including the Project's contractor Q.B.; the Constructora Santiago Corp. II (another construction company involved in the Project); the Puerto Rico Ports Authority; the Municipality of San Juan; and their respective insurance companies. Soon after, Q.B. filed third-party complaints against Rafaela Riviere-Andino, the driver who struck Lawes with her car, and her insurer. On November 26, 2013, Q.B. and Riviere-Andino jointly filed a third-party complaint against: CSA, the Project's designer; Miguel A. Bonilla, Inc., the Project's inspection firm; the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority ("PREPA"), which was conducting maintenance on streetlights in the construction-affected area; and these parties' insurance companies.5 Thereafter, Lawes amended his complaint twice, adding Q.B.'s insurers and CSA as direct defendants in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Although CSA is the only remaining defendant on appeal,6 we are tasked with reviewing district court rulings that resolved concomitant arguments raised by CSA, former defendant Q.B., and certain third-party defendants mentioned above. Thus, to aid the reader in understanding the district court's reasoning and our review of it, we must occasionally provide facts and conduct analysis concerning parties who are no longer part of the litigation.
After instituting his lawsuit, Lawes did what any smart plaintiff in his position would do: he retained an expert witness to opine on the standard of care owed to pedestrians in construction-affected areas and to explain how defendants' negligence caused his accident. Enter scene: Ralph Aronberg, the traffic engineer that Lawes brought into the case as his star (and only) expert witness. For the reasons we explain later, Aronberg's expert opinions were crucial to Lawes' case, and the district court's exclusion of them is part of the reason why Lawes appealed. Thus, Aronberg (and his opinions) are the primary focus of our review. That's why we're going to walk you through his role in the case, starting with his first act (here, a preliminary report).
On January 25, 2013, about six months after Lawes filed his first complaint, Aronberg submitted a three-page, self-described "preliminary report." (Spoiler alert: this would be the only expert report Aronberg produced.) Attached to the report, Aronberg provided a copy of his CV, a list of recent trials and depositions in which he testified as an expert, and excerpts from the 2009 edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices ("MUTCD") (which we'll discuss often here). Aronberg, according to his CV, is an expert in traffic accident reconstruction, traffic engineering design, work-zone traffic control evaluation, and pedestrian safety. A 1978 graduate of the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, he also holds a Master of Science in Engineering Management from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Aronberg worked for several years as a traffic engineer in Florida before founding a consulting firm in 1983. In the four years before he was hired by Lawes, Aronberg qualified to serve as an expert witness in sixteen trials and was deposed as an expert over forty times.
The report begins by disclosing the source of Aronberg's methodology: the MUTCD,7 a set of guidelines published by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which Aronberg later described as the "Bible" for traffic engineers. The MUTCD (among other things) includes guidance on "[p]edestrian [c]onsiderations" in...
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