Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-04093/USCOURTS-ca8-05-04093-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Howmedica
Not Party
MTG Divestitures
Appellee
Harold White
Appellant
Lois White
Appellant

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-4093

___________

Harold White; Lois White, *

*

Plaintiffs/Appellants, *

*

v. * Appeal from the United States

* District Court for the District

Howmedica, Inc., A wholly * of Nebraska.

owned subsidiary of Pfizer *

Drug Company, *

*

Defendant, *

*

MTG Divestitures, L.L.C., *

*

Defendant/Appellee. *

___________

Submitted: March 12, 2007

Filed: June 26, 2007

___________

Before COLLOTON, BEAM, and GRUENDER, Circuit Judges.

___________

BEAM, Circuit Judge.

Appellate Case: 05-4093 Page: 1 Date Filed: 06/26/2007 Entry ID: 3322770
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The Honorable Laurie Smith Camp, United States District Judge for the

District of Nebraska.

2

The Honorable F. A. Gossett, United States Magistrate Judge for the District

of Nebraska.

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Harold and Lois White appeal the district court's1

 dismissal of their suit on

summary judgment because they lacked expert testimony to support their product

liability claim. We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Lois White had a right knee replacement in 1996, performed by Dr. Stephen

Noel. Parts of the prosthetic knee were manufactured by Howmedica. Over the next

six years, White continued to have problems with the knee. In 2002, Dr. Noel

performed exploratory surgery, found that the prosthesis had fragmented, and

eventually replaced it with a new prosthesis. When Dr. Noel examined the original

prosthesis, he saw a small spherical cavity near the surface, and he concluded that this

cavity was caused by a manufacturing defect. 

The Whites filed this diversity products liability suit against the manufacturer

of the allegedly defective prosthetic knee parts. The district court's2

 final progression

order required experts to be disclosed by July 15, 2005, and as of that date, the Whites

had not designated an expert. On August 26, 2005, MTG moved for summary

judgment, alleging that in the absence of expert testimony to establish a defect, the

Whites' action failed as a matter of law. In response to the summary judgment motion,

the Whites presented an affidavit from Dr. Noel, who had previously (and timely)

been disclosed as a non-expert witness. The district court held that the information

Dr. Noel proffered in the affidavit was expert testimony, and that the Whites had

failed to timely designate Dr. Noel as an expert. Accordingly, the district court

refused to consider Dr. Noel's expert testimony. Because expert testimony was

Appellate Case: 05-4093 Page: 2 Date Filed: 06/26/2007 Entry ID: 3322770
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We assume for the purpose of this appeal that Dr. Noel could properly be

qualified as an expert in knee prosthetics under Daubert v. Merrell Dow

Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993).

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required by Nebraska law to establish their product liability claim, the district court

granted summary judgment in favor of MTG.

II. DISCUSSION

We review the district court's sanction of excluding Dr. Noel's expert3

 testimony

for an abuse of discretion, Martin v. DaimlerChrysler Corp., 251 F.3d 691, 694 (8th

Cir. 2001), and find none here. The district court was within its discretion to exclude

the Whites' untimely expert proffer because the Whites had ample time to comply with

the district court's progression order. The Whites filed suit in April 2004. The final

progression order was entered one year later in April 2005, mandating that all experts

be disclosed by July 2005. The Whites did not ask for an extension of time, and in

fact only proffered Dr. Noel's affidavit in response to the motion for summary

judgment. Accordingly, we affirm the district court's decision to exclude Dr. Noel's

affidavit as untimely. 

Because the Whites could not offer expert testimony to establish that the

prosthesis was defective, we turn to the question of whether the district court

appropriately granted summary judgment and dismissed the case based on this failure.

We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo. Roeder v. Metro.

Ins. and Annuity Co., 236 F.3d 433, 436 (8th Cir. 2001). Initially, we agree with the

district court's unchallenged conclusion that Nebraska substantive law governs this

dispute.

The Whites concede that ordinarily in a medical product liability case, the

product defect must be established by expert testimony. E.g., Durrett v. Baxter

Chrysler-Plymouth, Inc., 253 N.W.2d 37, 39-40 (Neb. 1977). The Whites argue that

Appellate Case: 05-4093 Page: 3 Date Filed: 06/26/2007 Entry ID: 3322770
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there is an exception to that "requirement" when the defect is obvious to a layperson,

citing Laird v. Scribner Coop, Inc., 466 N.W.2d 798, 804 (Neb. 1991). We agree that

Nebraska seems to recognize a "layperson exception" to the necessity for expert

testimony in certain cases. E.g., Durrett, 253 N.W.2d at 39 (noting that "reliance on

eyewitnesses alone is not fatal when a defect is obvious to a layman"). However, we

agree with the district court's conclusion that "[t]he presence of a defect in an artificial

knee component . . . is not something that is so generally recognizable as to qualify

under the so-called common knowledge exception or to eliminate the need for expert

testimony." Not only that, but the knee appliance was removed six years after its

initial implantation in Lois White's leg. We think it rather obvious that a layperson

could not have determined whether, and perhaps when, the knee device was or became

defective in this case. Therefore, the layperson exception does not apply here, and the

Whites needed to present expert testimony to prevail in this case.

III. CONCLUSION

Because the Whites did not meet the district court's reasonable deadline for

designating the expert testimony necessary to prove their product liability claim, we

affirm the judgment of the district court.

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