Wilden v. Laury Transportation, LLC

Wilden, age 19, and her infant son were involved in a traffic accident with an 18-wheel tractor-trailer. Wilden suffered severe brain damage when her sedan was pulled beneath the side of the trailer in a “side-underride” crash. The remaining defendant is Great Dane, the trailer’s manufacturer. The district court excluded plaintiffs’ expert-witness testimony about an alternative design that allegedly would have prevented, or at least mitigated, Wilden’s injuries. That alternative design is a “telescoping side guard.” An ordinary, fixed-position side guard would block the space underneath the side of the trailer so that, in a crash, automobiles would not go underneath. A telescoping side guard would also slide and expand to protect the space opened up when a truck’s sliding rear-axle— which trucks use to meet weight-per-axle regulations—is moved toward the rear of the truck. Although elements of the telescoping design have existed for some time, and computer simulations suggest that the design could work, nobody has ever built or tested one in the real world. The court held that the testimony of the two experts was unreliable and inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Great Dane. Given the total absence of real-world, physical-prototype testing and that neither expert had designed a telescoping side guard, the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the evidence. View "Wilden v. Laury Transportation, LLC" on Justia Law