Miller v. Bike Athletic Co.

• Decision Date: 07 January 1998
• Docket Number: No. 96-1030,96-1030
• Citation: 687 N.E.2d 735,80 Ohio St.3d 607
• Parties: MILLER et al., Appellants, v. BIKE ATHLETIC COMPANY et al., Appellees.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Page 607

80 Ohio St.3d 607

687 N.E.2d 735

MILLER et al., Appellants, v. BIKE ATHLETIC COMPANY et al., Appellees.

No. 96-1030.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted Sept. 9, 1997.

Decided Jan. 7, 1998.

SYLLABUS BY THE COURT

1. A trial court's role in determining whether an expert's testimony is admissible under Evid.R. 702(C) focuses on whether the opinion is based upon scientifically valid principles, not whether the expert's conclusions are correct or whether the testimony satisfies the proponent's burden of proof at trial.

2. When an out-of-court experiment is not represented to be a reenactment of the accident and deals with one aspect or principle directly related to the cause or result of the occurrence, the conditions of the accident need not be duplicated.

On September 7, 1990, John Patrick Miller, plaintiff-appellant, was seriously injured while playing football for St. John's Central Catholic High School in Bellaire, Ohio. Attempting to make a tackle, Miller collided head-on with another player who was running toward him at full speed. Miller sustained a comminuted fracture of the vertebral body of C5, with severe spinal cord injury, and was rendered quadriplegic.

Miller filed this lawsuit against defendants-appellees, Bike Athletic Company, Ace Cleaners & Reconditioners of Athletic Equipment, Inc., Athletic Helmet, Inc., the Catholic Diocese of Steubenville, St. John's Central Catholic High School, and Frank E. Vingia, the football coach at the high school. In his complaint, Miller alleged, inter alia, that the Bike air helmet he was wearing was negligently designed, manufactured, and sold by Bike Athletic Company; that Ace Reconditioners negligently reconditioned the helmet and failed to instruct him on the use of the helmet; that Athletic Helmet, Inc. negligently designed and/or reconditioned the helmet; and that the remaining defendants-appellees negligently instructed him on the proper fit and use of the helmet and negligently failed to properly inflate the helmet liners. Miller further alleged that such negligence proximately caused him to sustain his severe injuries. Claudia Ullom, Miller's mother, filed a loss-of-consortium claim.

Following extensive discovery, appellees filed motions for summary judgment. Appellees challenged primarily the expert opinion of James Lafferty, a mechanical and biomedical engineer retained by appellants, who believed that Miller's injury could have been prevented if the helmet had been properly inflated. Appellees also questioned the procedures Dr. Lafferty used to have the helmet tested.

The trial court granted summary judgment for appellees and held that Lafferty's opinion and that of two other experts who relied upon his opinion were inadmissible. The court reasoned that since Lafferty's opinion was premised on an out-of-court experiment which was dissimilar to conditions on the playing field, his opinion could not be considered, as it would confuse and mislead a jury. The court instead relied upon Dr. Joseph Maroon, an expert for appellee Bike Athletic Company, whose opinion was that no football helmet is currently designed to prevent the type of injury Miller sustained to his neck.

The court of appeals affirmed on similar grounds. It found that the trial court was warranted in striking Lafferty's expert opinion, that the experiment on the helmet was inadmissible, and that the other experts' opinions presented by appellants were also inadmissible. Upon review of the evidence, the court concluded that the type of injury Miller sustained is a risk of playing football and cannot be avoided even with proper headgear.

The cause is now before this court upon the allowance of a discretionary appeal.

Lancione, Davis & Myers Law Office Co., L.P.A., and Richard L. Lancione, Bellaire; Tarasi & Associates, P.C., Louis M. Tarasi, Jr. and Elizabeth T. Stevenson, Pittsburgh, PA, for appellants.

Davis & White, and Phillip M. Davis, Boston, MA, for appellee Bike Athletic Company.

Kinder, Harper, Hazlett & Hinzey, and Gregory W. Hinzey, St. Clairsville; Thorp, Reed & Armstrong, and Randolph T. Struk, Pittsburgh, PA; Scharf Law Office, and Ron Scharf, Litchfield, IL, for appellee Bike Athletic Company and Athletic Helmet, Inc.

Thomas, Fregiato, Myser, Hanson & Davies, and Rodney D. Hanson, Bridgeport, for appellee ACE Cleaners & Reconditioners of Athletic Equipment, Inc.

Sommer, Liberati, Shaheen & Hoffman, Keith A. Sommer and David K. Liberati, Martins Ferry, for appellees Catholic Diocese of Steubenville and/or the Diocese of Steubenville Catholic Charities, d.b.a. St. John's Central Catholic High School and St. John's Catholic Church of Bellaire, Ohio and Frank E. Vingia.

FRANCIS E. SWEENEY, Sr., Justice.

In determining whether the trial court was warranted in granting appellees' motions for summary judgment, we must consider whether the court properly excluded the scientific testimony of appellants' expert witnesses.

I. Expert Testimony of Dr. Lafferty

At the core of this determination is whether the testimony of James Lafferty was admissible and whether the test he based his opinion upon was reliable.

Appellants retained James Lafferty, a consulting engineer in the areas of mechanical and biomedical engineering, to provide them with an opinion on whether the helmet was a cause of Miller's injuries. The helmet, which was manufactured in 1981, had been reconditioned by appellee Ace Cleaners & Reconditioners of Athletic Equipment, Inc. prior to being used by appellant. The helmet is designed with an energy-absorbing liner consisting of two bladders, an upper and lower bladder. The lower bladder is to be inflated before the player puts on the helmet. The upper bladder is then inflated through a valve at the top of the helmet. When Lafferty examined the helmet, he found that the valve opening at the top of the helmet had been sealed shut and that the helmet had "zero gauge pressure" in the lower bladder. Although he did not know if there had been any leakage since the accident, Lafferty inflated the lower bladder and rechecked the pressure ten days later. At that time, he found no significant air leakage. Lafferty believed that the lining had not been properly inflated at the time Miller was injured.

Lafferty took the helmet to Capitol Varsity Athletic Equipment, Inc. to test it in accordance with standards established by the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment ("NOCSAE"). The purpose of such testing is to determine the helmet's shock-absorption properties under various conditions. The NOCSAE standard is a head-protection standard; however, in Lafferty's opinion, the test can also be used to determine whether a helmet can prevent injuries to the neck. In the NOCSAE test, the helmet is mounted on a head form and then dropped from varying heights, with the head form aligned so that impact can occur at the sides, back, top, and front. The "severity index" is then calculated from measurements of acceleration to determine the helmet's concussion tolerance. If a helmet has a severity index of higher than fifteen hundred, the helmet fails the test.

With Lafferty observing, an employee at Capitol Varsity Athletic Company conducted two partial tests on the helmet in question, dropping it from a height of sixty inches, with impact to the top of the helmet only, since that is where Lafferty believed the point of impact was. First, the helmet was tested with no air added in the lower bladder, which resulted in a severity index of six hundred twenty-four. Next, the lower bladder was inflated to a pressure of 3.5 pounds per square inch, which resulted in a severity index of four hundred seventeen. Lafferty stated that although the helmet passed the test in both instances, the critical fact was that the failure to inflate the lower bladder decreased the energy-absorbing capability by about fifty percent. In conjunction with this finding, Lafferty then noted that the threshold for compressive fracture of the C5 body is about one thousand pounds of force and that the force sustained by Miller's spine was at the threshold level (otherwise, he would have sustained additional fractures at other locations on the spine). Lafferty concluded that a fifty-percent increase in the energy absorbing capability of the helmet would have attenuated the forces to below the threshold level. Had the helmet been properly inflated, the helmet would have sufficiently absorbed the force of the impact, and the injury would have been avoided.

In deciding whether Lafferty's testimony was proper, we begin our analysis with a consideration of Evid.R. 702, which governs the admissibility of expert testimony. It provides:

"A witness may testify as an expert if all of the following apply:

"(A) The witness' testimony either relates to matters beyond the knowledge or experience possessed by lay persons or dispels a misconception common among lay persons;

"(B) The witness is qualified as an expert by specialized knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education regarding the subject matter of the testimony;

"(C) The witness' testimony is based on reliable scientific, technical, or other specialized information. To the extent that the testimony reports the result of a procedure, test, or experiment, the testimony is reliable only if all of the following apply:

"(1) The theory upon which the procedure, test, or experiment is based is objectively verifiable or is validly derived from widely accepted knowledge, facts, or principles;

"(2) The design of the procedure, test, or experiment reliably implements the theory;

"(3) The particular procedure, test, or experiment was conducted in a way that will yield an accurate result."

There is no question that Dr. Lafferty is a qualified expert who testified about a subject beyond the knowledge of lay persons. Evid.R. 702(A) and (B). Thus, at issue in this case is whether Lafferty's testimony complied with the requirements of...