The Second Circuit affirmed the grant of summary judgment for a golf cart maker who challenged plaintiff’s expert opinion in a design defect suit by a teenager injured in a 2007 golf cart accident. See Valente v. Textron, Inc., No. 13-1456 (2d Cir., 3/10/14).

Plaintiffs appealed from an award of summary judgment in favor of defendants on Valente’s strict liability and negligence design defect claims for damages allegedly sustained when Valente was operating a golf car manufactured by defendants. Valente contended that the district court erred in precluding the testimony of his expert (K. Seluga) after a hearing pursuant to Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).

Specifically, the district court excluded Seluga’s testimony that yaw instability—resulting from a design defect in the use of a two-wheel rear braking system as opposed to a four-wheel braking system—was responsible for Valente’s accident. In fact, the court of appeals concluded, the district court’s thoughtful and thorough explanation for excluding Seluga’s testimony convincingly demonstrated that it acted well within its discretion.

There is no dispute that the coefficient of friction term in the relevant calculations was the determining factor in the expert’s opinion that yaw instability was responsible for Valente’s accident. But the coefficient of friction used by Seluga, based on flat surface testing, was approximately 40% lower than the coefficient measured by Seluga and defendants’ expert on the actual path of the accident, as well as that used by the expert in a published peer reviewed article on the topic.

Even assuming the reliability of the coefficient, Seluga testified that his simulation would predict a
rollover due to yaw instability somewhere between 25% and 50% of the time.  The purpose for which Valente sought to offer Seluga’s testimony, however, was not that under certain circumstances there was a 25% chance that the accident could have occurred as a result of the defect in the golf car, but rather that the design defect actually caused the accident “to a reasonable degree of engineering certainty.” Where, as here, data is simply inadequate to support the conclusions reached, Daubert and Rule 702 mandate the exclusion of that unreliable opinion
testimony.

With Seluga’s testimony properly excluded, the record was devoid of any evidence supporting Valente’s theory that the golf car had a design defect or that such a design defect likely caused his accident.

Affirmed.