A federal court recently certified a class of Minnesota building owners in litigation over issues with plumbing systems. See In re: Zurn Pex Plumbing Products Liability Litigation, MDL No. 08-1958, 2010 WL 1839278 (D.Minn. 5/6/10).
The issue for our readers is not so much what happened, but what should have happened but did not. I recently posted about the7th Circuit decision in American Honda Motor Co., Inc. v. Allen, 2010 WL 1332781 (7th Cir., April 7, 2010), mandating that trial courts rule on the admissibility of expert testimony at the certification stage of litigation when the testimony is critical to certification. That is the only approach that makes any sense. Otherwise, the court risks certifying a class — and engaging the parties in the massive discovery and notice process that accompanies it — based on testimony that fails the Daubert test, is unreliable, and eventually inadmissible under the Federal Rules. Here, the court refused to exclude the testimony of two plaintiff experts at the certification stage. The court noted that the 8th Circuit had not yet adopted the approach of the 7th Circuit.
Historically, potable water plumbing systems used copper pipes. In the 1990’s, some companies designed plumbing systems using polybutylene plastic. After a wave of litigation involving allegedly failed polybutylene plumbing systems, defendant Zurn designed a cross-linked polyethylene plumbing system, commonly referred to as “pex,” as an alternative to polybutylene systems and copper plumbing systems. Plaintiffs were individuals who owned a home with a Zurn pex plumbing system. in several lawsuits, plaintiffs alleged that defective fittings used in the pex system caused their plumbing systems to leak resulting in damage to their properties. Plaintiffs also alleged that Zurn failed to adequately test the brass crimp fittings in their anticipated environments before marketing its product. In 2008, the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation determined that the pex plumbing cases met the MDL test, and that centralization of the cases in Minnesota was appropriate.
Plaintiffs moved for certification of a class of all persons and entities that own a structure located within the State of Minnesota that contains a Zurn Pex plumbing system with brass crimp fittings. Defendants, in turn, moved to exclude portions of the testimony of plaintiffs’ experts, Dr. Wallace Blischke and Dr. Roger Staehle.
Dr. Blischke, a statistician, performed an analysis of Zurn’s warranty claims data and estimated that millions of Zurn’s brass fittings will fail within the twenty-five year warranty period; he concluded that the fittings have a mean time to failure of 40 years. Defendants offered evidence that the 40 years was based on unsupported assumption, not data. The court admitted that as merits discovery unfolded and more information becomes available, Dr. Blischke’s 40 year estimate for the mean time to failure “may or may not be admissible,” but it would consider the expert testimony in support of class certification anyway and “has given such testimony proper weight.”
Dr. Staehle then conducted a round of testing known as the U-bend test of brass specimens from Zurn’s fittings. Defendants offered evidence that the reliability of Dr. Staehle’s U-bend testing was undermined by his use of an artificially inflated level of strain, and they challenged the correctness of Dr. Staehle’s calculation of the strain. The court concluded that “at this point” it would not exclude the testimony, which could be the subject of cross examination.
The certification battleground was 23(b)(3) predominance. Defendants stressed that there were lots of possible causes of the failure of any particular plumbing system, and thus individual issues predominated. Plaintiffs — and here we see where the denial of a Daubert inquiry has its pernicious effect — responded that the brass crimp fittings used in the pex plumbing system suffer from an inherent design and manufacturing defect, and that the parts were substantially certain to fail within the 25 year express warranty provided by Zurn and/or the useful life of the fittings. And this was a set of predominating common issues, they said. But they only get there through the testimony of the experts, not only on the merits, but on the presentation that the defects and useful life were demonstrable on a common basis through expert testimony about testing and time-to-failure. So, for example, in certifying a warranty class for those plaintiffs whose systems had not yet failed, the court readily acknowledged being influenced by the fact that plaintiffs “allege, and intend to prove by expert testimony, that Zurn’s brass crimp fittings suffer from a uniform, inherent design and manufacturing defect….”
Similarly, with regard to a class relying on a negligence cause of action, the court concluded that if plaintiffs can prove that the crimp fittings suffer from a uniform, inherent design and manufacturing defect, and that the defect is the only cause of failure in the majority of the cases, then proximate cause will not involve predominately individual determinations, and resolution of that issue would be common the class. For class certification purposes, the court was “convinced that Plaintiffs have adduced sufficient evidence to support their theory of the case.” But, of course, that evidence was arguably inadmissible expert testimony.
Since proof of reliance will likely vary among class members, and since defendants are entitled to present individualized defenses to reliance under Minnesota law, plaintiffs failed to show that the reliance component of their consumer protection claims could be proven by common evidence. Accordingly, class certification as to plaintiffs’ consumer protection claims was denied.
But imagine how easy it can be to show “predominance” of common issues when your proof is unreliable, inadmissible, unscientific, expert testimony that just doesn’t get screened. Why should the gatekeeper role not impact entrance to the expensive, protracted world of a class action as much as to trial?