Newell Rubbermaid, Inc. v. Raymond Corp.

• Decision Date: 03 April 2012
• Docket Number: No. 10–3912.,10–3912.
• Citation: 676 F.3d 521
• Parties: NEWELL RUBBERMAID, INC., Plaintiff–Appellant, v. The RAYMOND CORPORATION, Defendant–Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

676 F.3d 521

NEWELL RUBBERMAID, INC., Plaintiff–Appellant,

v.The RAYMOND CORPORATION, Defendant–Appellee.

No. 10–3912.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

Argued: Jan. 18, 2012.Decided and Filed: April 3, 2012.

ARGUED: Matthew M. Nee, Lakewood, Ohio, for Appellant. Raymond D. Jamieson, Quarles & Brady LLP, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Matthew M. Nee, Lakewood, Ohio, Nicholas A. Panagopoulos II, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellant. Raymond D. Jamieson, Patrick W. Schmidt, Quarles & Brady LLP, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Harry T. Quick, Brzytwa Quick & McCrystal LLC, Cleveland, Ohio, for Appellee.Before: BATCHELDER, Chief Judge; CLAY and GILMAN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

RONALD LEE GILMAN, Circuit Judge.

Newell Rubbermaid, Inc. (Newell) filed this subrogation action to hold The Raymond Corporation (Raymond) liable for workers' compensation benefits that Newell paid its employee, Jean Hashman, after she sustained injuries in a forklift accident at work. Raymond had designed and manufactured the forklift. Newell asserts that a design defect—the failure to include a rear guard door on the forklift—caused Hashman's injuries when her left foot slipped out of the operator compartment and was crushed between the forklift and a warehouse structure.

In the district court, Raymond filed a motion to exclude the testimony of Newell's expert witness and a motion for summary judgment. Both motions were granted. The court concluded that the methods used by the proposed expert were not sufficiently reliable to support his proffered opinions. As a result, the court granted summary judgment for Raymond, determining that Newell could not sustain a design-defect claim without expert testimony. For the reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

I. BACKGROUND

In December 2004, Hashman worked at a Newell facility in Ohio. One of her regular duties was to drive a Dockstocker forklift manufactured by Raymond. The Dockstocker was designed with an “open” compartment in which the operator stands (i.e., the forklift has no seat). Nor did it have a rear guard door. Raymond sells separate rear guard doors, intended to prevent items on the warehouse floor from protruding into the operator compartment, but Newell did not purchase this component for its Dockstocker. Notably, the industry standards developed by the American National Standards Institute/American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ANSI/ASME) do not mandate that manufacturers include a rear guard door as a standard feature on forklifts.

Before beginning her shift on December 23, 2004, Hashman completed the required safety check and found nothing wrong with the Dockstocker. Later that day, while driving toward a “robot cage” with the operator compartment facing forward, Hashman attempted to brake by “plugging” the forklift; i.e., manually reversing the direction in which the forklift was traveling. But the Dockstocker did not immediately stop. Hashman testified in her deposition that she “got scared” and “stepped off” the Dockstocker, but other evidence in the record suggests that Hashman instead lost her balance and slipped out of the operator compartment.

In any event, Hashman's left foot became trapped between the forklift and the robot cage, causing serious injuries that ultimately resulted in a partial amputation. Hashman sued Newell for workers' compensation benefits in 2006, and Newell settled the claim. Newell's investigation report found no fault with the Dockstocker's brakes or its design, and instead directed the blame toward Hashman's poor training and the conditions in the warehouse. But Newell now asserts that Hashman's foot would not have left the operator compartment had Raymond equipped its Dockstocker with a standard-issue rear guard door, a safety feature about which Raymond has been aware since at least 1961.

In November 2008, Newell filed the present complaint against Raymond, alleging a design-defect claim under Ohio's products liability law, as well as several other claims. Under Ohio law in effect at the time of Hashman's accident, Newell was entitled to proceed simultaneously under two distinct theories of liability for a design defect: (1) risk-benefit, and (2) consumer-expectations. See Ohio Rev.Code § 2307.75(A) (2001) (amended 2005). (The statute has since been amended to remove the consumer-expectations theory, but Raymond concedes that the earlier version with both tests is the appropriate version to apply in the present case.) The complaint did not select a specific theory of design-defect liability.

Newell offered the testimony of Benjamin T. Railsback to support its claims. Railsback, a forensic engineer with no experience in driving a Raymond forklift and only limited experience in driving forklifts from other manufacturers, opined that the Dockstocker was defectively designed because it did not have a rear guard door to prevent the operator's feet from accidentally leaving the operator compartment. Raymond moved to exclude Railsback's testimony.

At the same time, Raymond moved for summary judgment, arguing that Newell had failed to adequately support its design-defect claim. Newell responded with Railsback's report, deposition testimony from Raymond's experts, and deposition testimony from eyewitnesses to the accident. It also argued that summary judgment was inappropriate because Raymond had failed to demonstrate the absence of a genuine dispute on the consumer-expectations theory, a theory not addressed in Raymond's brief. But Newell did not support this latter argument with any evidence of its own that would support a genuine dispute as to consumer expectations regarding the Dockstocker.

The district court granted Raymond's motion to exclude Railsback's testimony. It concluded that Railsback did not have sufficient training or experience with forklifts to qualify him as an expert witness, that his testimony was not relevant because it involved different models of forklifts than the one at issue in the present case, and that his methods of extrapolating from anecdotal evidence and his failure to test his proposed alternative designs rendered his opinion unreliable.

The district court then granted Raymond's motion for summary judgment. It ruled that, under applicable Sixth Circuit precedent, Newell could not support its risk-benefit theory of design defect without expert testimony. The court similarly concluded that expert testimony was necessary to support Newell's consumer-expectations theory. It so ruled based on this court's opinion in Brown v. Raymond Corp., 432 F.3d 640, 646 (6th Cir.2005), where we held under Tennessee law that a forklift was a complex mechanism requiring expert testimony to support both types of design-defect claims. The district court applied this requirement to Newell's claim under Ohio law, concluding that Newell was unable to meet its burden under the consumer-expectations theory.

Newell has timely appealed. It seeks reversal of the district court's decision granting Raymond's motions to exclude Railsback's testimony and for summary judgment.

II. ANALYSIS

A. Standard of review

We review de novo a district court's grant of summary judgment. ACLU of Ky. v. Grayson Cnty., Ky., 591 F.3d 837, 843 (6th Cir.2010). Summary judgment is proper where no genuine dispute of material fact exists and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(a). In considering a motion for summary judgment, the court must draw all reasonable inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587, 106 S.Ct. 1348, 89 L.Ed.2d 538 (1986). The central issue is “whether the evidence presents a sufficient disagreement to require submission to a jury or whether it is so one-sided that one party must prevail as a matter of law.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 251–52, 106 S.Ct. 2505, 91 L.Ed.2d 202 (1986).

With respect to the admissibility of expert testimony, we apply the abuse-of-discretion standard. Hardyman v. Norfolk & W. Ry. Co., 243 F.3d 255, 258 (6th Cir.2001). “A district court abuses its discretion if it bases its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence.” Brown, 432 F.3d at 647 (internal quotation marks omitted).

B. Exclusion of Newell's expert witness1. Applicable law

Newell first argues that the district court erroneously excluded the testimony of Railsback, its expert witness. The admissibility of expert testimony is governed by Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. At the time of trial, Rule 702 provided:

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 otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles and methods reliably to the facts of the case.

Fed.R.Evid. 702 (2010) (amended December 1, 2011 for stylistic reasons only, see cmt. 2011 amends.).

A district court's task in assessing evidence proffered under Rule 702 is to determine whether the evidence “both rests on a reliable foundation and is relevant to the task at hand.” Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 597, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993). One key consideration is “whether the reasoning or methodology underlying the testimony is scientifically valid.” Id. at 592–93, 113 S.Ct. 2786. The inquiry is “a flexible one,” and “[t]he focus ... must be solely on principles and methodology, not on the conclusions they generate.” Id. at 594–95, 113 S.Ct. 2786. An expert who presents testimony must “employ[ ] in the courtroom the same level of intellectual rigor that characterizes the...