Opinion ID: 161717
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sevart's Testimony.

Text: 12 (a) Arndt Study--In considering Defendants' claim of error, we first focus on the testimony of Sevart referencing the Arndt study. The district court treated Defendants' motion in limine as a specific objection to the testimony of Sevart. As stated above, Sevart relied on the statistics in the Arndt article concerning the number of people killed in tractor rollovers in the fifty years before 1971 to support his conclusion that the mower manufactured by Defendants was defective and unreasonably dangerous. It does not appear from the record that Plaintiff made any attempt to establish the substantial similarity of the tractor rollovers reported in the Arndt article to the accident that caused the death of Black. This court will assume, therefore, that such a showing was not made during the proceedings relating to Defendants' motion in limine. . 13 That Plaintiff failed to show substantial similarity, however, does not automatically mean that there was an abuse of discretion in allowing Sevart's deposition testimony. 14 Our review . . . is not contingent on the theory of admissibility adopted by the district court: evidence does not become inadmissible simply because the district court relied on an erroneous reason for admitting it. So long as the evidence is admissible under some legally correct theory, no error occurred. 15 Ingersoll-Rand Co., 214 F.3d at 1247-48 (quotation omitted). 16 Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence permits a witness qualified as an expert to give an opinion about scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge which will assist the trier of fact in determining a fact in issue. Fed. R. Evid. 702. Rule 703 pertains to the facts or data upon which an expert may base his opinion, and at the time of trial provided as follows: 17 The facts or data in the particular case upon which an expert bases an opinion or inference may be those perceived by or made known to the expert at or before the hearing. If of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming opinions or inferences upon the subject, the facts or data need not be admissible in evidence. 3 18 In his testimony, Sevart relied on the Arndt study to conclude that Defendants' mower was defective and unreasonably dangerous because it did not have a ROPS. The testimony of Sevart, a licensed professional engineer, was testimony by a witness qualified as an expert. Fed. R. Evid. 702. 4 Thus, Sevart was entitled to rely on facts or data . . . of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field in forming his opinion that Defendants' mower was defective and unreasonably dangerous. Fed. R. Evid. 703. As Defendants have not argued otherwise, this court will assume that the Arndt article is of a type reasonably relied upon by experts in the particular field. Fed. R. Evid. 703. 19 Sevart was therefore entitled to rely on the Arndt article in forming his opinion about whether Defendants' mower was defective and unreasonably dangerous. It does not necessarily follow, however, that Sevart was also entitled to testify concerning the content of the Arndt article, as this evidence was otherwise inadmissable because of Plaintiff's failure to establish the substantial similarity of the other tractor rollover accidents. The language of Rule 703 does not indicate whether an expert can testify about the content of studies reasonably relied on in forming the basis of his expert opinion but otherwise inadmissable under the Federal Rules of Evidence. See Gong v. Hirsch, 913 F.2d 1269, 1273 (7th Cir. 1990) (While Rule 703 entitles experts to base their opinion on [evidence otherwise inadmissible], the rule does not address the admissibility of the underlying information.). 20 In Kinser v. Gehl Co, this court held that the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing an expert to reference various documents used to support the expert's opinion, despite the inadmissibility of the unauthenticated documents. See 184 F.3d 1259, 1274-75 (10th Cir. 1999) (framing the issue as whether the district court erred in allowing plaintiff's expert to testify about and reference various documents relied on by the expert in forming his expert opinion, and concluding that the district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing this testimony), overruled on other grounds, Weisgram v. Marley Co., 528 U.S. 440, 446 n.2, 456-57 (2000). In so holding, this court seemed to adopt the analysis articulated in a leading treatise that experts should be allowed to base their opinion on inadmissible evidence, and also to testify concerning the content of the inadmissible evidence, if the evidence is inadmissible only because of relevance or reliability concerns. See id. at 1275; see also 29 Charles Alan Wright & Victor James Gold, Federal Practice and Procedure 6273, at 311-21 (1997). This court justified its holding in Kinser by stating that [t]he rationale for this aspect of Rule 703 is that experts in the field can be presumed to know what evidence is sufficiently trustworthy and probative to merit reliance. Kinser, 184 F.3d at 1275 (quotation omitted). 21 Under circuit precedent, therefore, experts are allowed to base their opinions on otherwise inadmissible evidence if the basis upon which the evidence would otherwise be considered inadmissible is reliability or relevance concerns. Accordingly, Sevart's testimony about the content of the Arndt article was properly admitted if the substantial similarity test is driven by reliability or relevance concerns. It is clear that the substantial similarity requirement derives from relevance concerns. See 63A Am. Jur. 2d Products Liability 1067 (1997). The trial court thus did not abuse its discretion in allowing Sevart to testify about the Arndt study. 22 (b) Sevart's personal investigation of other accidents--Sevart also testified concerning his own investigation of other tractor rollovers, the partial results of which were published in an article entitled The Design of ROPS for Small Tractors in the Ten to Twenty Horsepower Range. As stated previously, the district court treated Defendants' motion in limine as a specific objection to the testimony of Sevart, but allowed Sevart to testify about his private investigation of tractor rollovers. 23 The district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing Sevart's testimony. Sevart testified that he had investigated at least twenty-five rollover accidents involving [s]mall tractors . . . [u]sed primarily for mowing, explaining the various ways in which these tractors had rolled over. The district court's conclusion that this testimony satisfied the substantial similarity test was not arbitrary, capricious, whimsical, or manifestly unreasonable. Coletti, 165 F.3d at 777.