Sardis v. Overhead Door Corp.

• Decision Date: 20 August 2021
• Docket Number: No. 20-1411,20-1411
• Citation: 10 F.4th 268
• Parties: Andrea SARDIS, as Administrator of the Estate of Evangelos Sardis, Deceased, Plaintiff – Appellee, v. OVERHEAD DOOR CORPORATION, Defendant – Appellant. Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc., Amicus Supporting Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

10 F.4th 268

Andrea SARDIS, as Administrator of the Estate of Evangelos Sardis, Deceased, Plaintiff – Appellee,

v.OVERHEAD DOOR CORPORATION, Defendant – Appellant.

Product Liability Advisory Council, Inc., Amicus Supporting Appellant.

No. 20-1411

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued: March 11, 2021

Decided: August 20, 2021

ARGUED: Sarah Virginia Bondurant Price, MCGUIREWOODS LLP, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. L. Steven Emmert, SYKES, BOURDON, AHERN & LEVY, PC, Virginia Beach, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Michael W. Stark, MCGUIREWOODS LLP, Richmond, Virginia; Martin A. Conn, Matthew J. Hundley, Lisa M. McMurdo, MORAN REEVES & CONN PC, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellant. Peter C. Grenier, GRENIER LAW GROUP PLLC, Washington, D.C.; Andrew G. Slutkin, Ethan Nochumowitz, SILVERMAN THOMPSON SLUTKIN & WHITE, Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellee. Robert L. Wise, Jason R. Hodge, Richmond, Virginia, Susan E. Burnett, BOWMAN AND BROOKE LLP, Austin, Texas, for Amicus Curiae.

Before GREGORY, Chief Judge, AGEE, and DIAZ, Circuit Judges.

Reversed and remanded with instructions by published opinion. Judge Agee wrote the opinion, in which Chief Judge Gregory and Judge Diaz joined.

AGEE, Circuit Judge:

Federal Rule of Evidence 702 appoints trial judges as "gatekeepers of expert testimony" to protect the judicial process from "the potential pitfalls of junk science." United States v. Bonner , 648 F.3d 209, 215 (4th Cir. 2011). If a trial court abdicates that duty by opening the gate indiscriminately to any proffered expert witness––particularly one with whom it recognizes "legitimate concerns," J.A. 287––it risks exposing jurors to "dubious scientific testimony" that can ultimately "sway[ ]" their verdict, Nease v. Ford Motor Co. , 848 F.3d 219, 231 (4th Cir. 2017) (quoting In re Zurn Pex Plumbing Prods. Liab. Litig. , 644 F.3d 604, 613 (8th Cir. 2011) ). That risk is notably amplified in products liability cases, for "expert witnesses necessarily may play a significant part" in establishing or refuting liability. Chase v. Gen. Motors Corp. , 856 F.2d 17, 20 (4th Cir. 1988).

Appellee Andrea Sardis, in her capacity as the Administrator of the Estate of her late husband, Evangelos Sardis ("the Estate"), asserted various products liability claims against Appellant Overhead Door Corporation ("ODC") relating to Mr. Sardis’ tragic death in a work-related accident in June 2016. But the only probative evidence supporting the Estate's claims came from two expert witnesses, neither of whom offered relevant or reliable opinions. Nonetheless, the district court permitted the jurors to hear their testimony, finding that cross-examination was the proper, and only, tool to vet any relevance or reliability factors. On the basis of that testimony, the jury awarded the Estate a multi-million-dollar verdict.

That verdict is the result of the district court's abuse of discretion in admitting the Estate's expert testimony. Without it, the Estate offered insufficient admissible evidence as a matter of law to prevail on any of the four claims submitted to the jury. We therefore reverse the judgment in this case, and remand with instructions that judgment be entered in favor of ODC as to each of the Estate's claims.

I.

A.

ODC designs and manufactures garage doors and the metal hoods those doors are installed in, and then sells these products through a network of independent distributors. ODC also designs and manufactures the packaging used for shipping these products. The packaging––not the garage doors or hoods––is the focus of this case.

For thirty years, until 2014, ODC shipped its garage door hoods in rectangular prism-shaped containers. The entire container was made of a double-wall corrugated material, and the two "ends" of the container (the two square ends to which all four of the rectangular "sides" connected) contained handhold "punchouts" in the material. ODC intended for workers to use, and workers in fact used, these handholds to push and pull the containers as necessary for storage and transit. ODC never received a report of a worker ripping a handhold, but it did receive complaints that the corrugated material would collapse during transit, damaging the hoods inside.

In response to these complaints, ODC redesigned its garage door hood containers in December 2014. It kept the same rectangular prism shape, but made two important modifications. First, it replaced the double-wall corrugated material on the sides with triple-wall corrugated material. Second, it replaced the double-wall corrugated material on the ends with wood slats. Staples connected each of the four triple-wall corrugated sides to two vertical pieces of wood on either "end." The square "ends" were comprised of several horizontal pieces of wood that were nailed into the two vertical wood slats. ODC incorporated the "handhold" design from its old container design by omitting one horizontal wood piece on each end. A photograph of an exemplar container, J.A. 1243, is reproduced below.

Prior to using this new container design for shipping its goods, ODC performed some field testing. According to Bradley Knable, ODC's corporate designee, the testing included workers pushing and pulling the containers using those handholds, although there was no specific test of the maximum strength of the new handholds. The new design overall performed to ODC's satisfaction. ODC then shipped garage door hoods in these new containers to select customers. ODC asked for feedback on the containers, and received no complaints about the new container or its handholds.

B.

Mr. Sardis began working for Washington Overhead Door, Inc. ("WOD"), an ODC distributor, in June 2016. On June 6, 2016, he and his training supervisor, Keith Lawrence, were asked to transport an ODC garage door hood to a work site. The hood was shipped in a post-2014 ODC container (hereinafter "the Container"), which was loaded onto a ladder rack in the bed of a WOD service truck that Lawrence operated. At the work site, Lawrence tried to remove the Container from the truck with a forklift, but the Container became unbalanced on the forklift's tines, making it unsafe to unload. Mr. Sardis then climbed onto the ladder rack and tried to adjust the Container on the forklift tines by pulling on one of its handholds. Lawrence recalled seeing Mr. Sardis standing in a "C position," in which his hands were directly over his feet, and his body was curved in a "C"-shape. J.A. 665–66. When Mr. Sardis pulled, the wood slat constituting the handhold broke off, causing him to fall off the ladder rack and hit his head on the pavement nine feet below. He succumbed to his injuries two weeks later. The Container was photographed immediately after the accident, but it was not preserved, to the fault of neither party. Thus, neither party could test or otherwise examine the Container involved in Mr. Sardis’ accident.¹

C.

After Mr. Sardis’ death, the Estate sued ODC in federal court, invoking the district court's diversity jurisdiction.² The Estate asserted four causes of action under Virginia products liability law: (1) a general negligence claim; (2) a design defect claim; (3) a breach of implied warranty claim; and (4) a failure to warn claim.³ Essentially, the Estate alleged that ODC was negligent in designing the Container's handholds, and that this defective design caused Mr. Sardis’ injuries. Alternatively, the Estate alleged that ODC had a duty to warn foreseeable users of the Container to not rely on the handholds for pulling it, and that had Mr. Sardis been warned, he would not have been injured. The Estate offered Sher Paul Singh, Ph.D., as its sole expert for the design defect claim; and Michael S. Wogalter, Ph.D., as the sole expert for the failure to warn claim.

Dr. Singh, a packaging design engineer, opined that the Container should have been designed according to what he claimed was the relevant industry standard, American Society of Testing and Materials Standard #D6039 ("ASTM D6039"). He opined that the Container failed to satisfy this standard in two ways: (1) the handholds should not have been included in the design; and (2) the Container should have been designed with end "cleats," or pieces of lumber or plywood vertically nailed onto the wood end pieces on the outside of the Container. Dr. Singh also testified that ODC breached industry standards by failing to test the Container prior to placing it in the stream of commerce. Finally, without performing any testing or citing to any published literature, he opined that these failures proximately caused Mr. Sardis’ death.

The Estate also offered the expert testimony of Dr. Wogalter for its failure to warn claim. Dr. Wogalter described himself as an expert on "human factors," which he said was "a discipline of study that deals with the design of products and systems based on people's abilities and limitations to promote productivity, satisfaction, and safety." J.A. 96, 555. He offered three opinions: (1) ODC should have done a "hazard analysis" (which entails, inter alia , field and laboratory testing and soliciting feedback from consumers) to ascertain if its new handhold design created new dangers that would require warnings; (2) the lack of warnings about the hazards of pulling on the wooden handholds made it unreasonably dangerous; and (3) ODC's failure to perform a hazard analysis and to warn consumers not to pull on the Container's handholds proximately caused Mr. Sardis’ death.

Before trial, ODC filed a motion in limine to exclude both experts’ testimony as irrelevant and unreliable. See Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms. , 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (1993). The district court denied the motion as to both experts in a cursory fashion. Making no relevancy determinations, it held only that ODC's reliability concerns lacked merit because " ‘[a] lack of testing ... affects the weight of the evidence,’ not its admissibility." E.g. , J.A. 289 (citation omitted)....