Was The Sander Defective?
Shannon Unrein screamed. Her right arm was being pulled into an industrial sanding machine.Before co-workers were able to turn the machine off, Unrein had sustained serious injuries to her hand and arm, a “crush degloving” injury that exposed bone, shredded tendons, and caused tissue loss.Unrein sued the manufacturer of the sander under product liability theories of defective design and failure to warn.The trial court excluded the opinions of her expert witness and granted summary judgment to the manufacturer.Unrein appealed to the federal appellate court.Unrein v. Travelers, Inc., January 10, 2005 (8th Cir. 2005).
Unrein’s expert had impressive credentials. He had graduate degrees in industrial engineering and was a professor of mechanical engineering specializing in human factors engineering and safety.He had worked as a design engineer and for over thirty years as an industrial consultant in the areas of human factors engineering, occupational safety, and methods engineering.In his opinion, the sander was defectively designed and unreasonably dangerous because the infeed area of the sander, where the wooden pieces entered the sander, lacked proper safeguarding.His report was also critical of the absence of a braking device to make the conveyor belt stop quickly, and he discussed how a light beam attached to the brake would stop the conveyor belt if the operator’s hand crossed the beam.According to the expert, the most important safety measure required of a manufacturer is to “design the hazard out of the machine” and the next most important measure is to safeguard against the hazard.The manufacturer had allegedly failed in both respects.The expert’s solution was to use a continuous safety trip cord along the outside of the tree sides of the sander, together with a brake to quickly stop the conveyor belt.His opinion was that Unrein’s injury would not have occurred if the sander had been designed as he proposed.
The manufacturer moved for summary judgment on both plaintiff’s theories of defective design and failure to warn. The trial court easily disposed of Unrein’s failure to warn claim. There was no evidence that the warnings on the sander were inadequate or that the lack of some particular warning caused her injuries–the expert’s report was silent on this issue and there was no other evidence to support the claim.
On the defective design claim, the manufacturer did not argue that Unrein’s expert was unqualified to render an opinion, but rather that the expert’s opinion was unreliable and would not assist the trier of fact in the case. Because the issue of the admissibility of expert testimony in a diversity case is governed by federal law, the court applied the dual standards of Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).Rule 702 requires that expert evidence must assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, and Daubert requires that the court exercise a “gatekeeper” role in screening expert testimony to make sure the proffered expert testimony is both reliable and relevant.
The court concluded that the expert’s opinion lacked the “indicia of reliability” on several grounds: The expert had not developed his guard concept as a physical barrier between the operator and the point where the wooden pieces entered the sander; he had not prepared drawings to show how his proposed safety trip cord would be integrated into the sander; he had not presented any photographs showing the use of such a trip cord on other similar machines; and he had provided “even less information” on how the brake would function. The court therefore agreed with the trial court that the expert’s testimony was properly excluded.
The federal court noted that it was not necessary for the expert to construct or manufacture a new device or prototype to show how the proposed design solution would work (as the manufacturer had argued). However, the court also noted that an expert proposing design solutions and safety modifications must show by some means that the proposed solution will work to protect the machine operator without interfering with the utility of the machine; in other words, the expert must show that the proposed alternate design is feasible and compatible with the operation of the sander.