Opinion ID: 4551037
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Summary Judgment on Negligence

Text: We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, draw‐ ing all reasonable inferences in favor of the non‐moving par‐ ties—here, plaintiﬀs Moses and Dee Perez. Lewis v. CITGO Pe‐ troleum Corp., 561 F.3d 698, 702 (7th Cir. 2009). The plaintiﬀs challenge the district court’s exclusion of their expert testi‐ mony and argue that they would have defeated summary judgment if that evidence had been considered. We aﬃrm the district court’s exclusion of plaintiﬀs’ experts but find that summary judgment was still improper. Applying Illinois law, a reasonable jury could find that Wharton was negligent based on the remaining record.
We apply two layers of review to a district court’s decision to exclude expert evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. First, we review de novo a district court’s application of the legal framework. Second, if the court applied the correct legal analysis, we review its decision to admit or exclude ex‐ pert testimony for abuse of discretion. C.W. v. Textron, Inc., 807 F.3d 827, 835 (7th Cir. 2015), discussing Rule 702 and Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). Plain‐ tiffs imply that it was improper for the district court to ana‐ lyze the admissibility of their expert evidence sua sponte, without adversarial briefing. Defendants raised the issue in an irregular way, in their sur‐reply on their motion for sum‐ mary judgment. The procedural irregularity does not affect No. 19‐2984 7 our decision here. A district court is entitled to rule on expert admissibility sua sponte. See Lewis, 561 F.3d at 704, citing Kirstein v. Parks Corp., 159 F.3d 1065, 1067 (7th Cir. 1998); O’Conner v. Commonwealth Edison Co., 13 F.3d 1090, 1094, 1107 (7th Cir. 1994). As long as the district court has given the par‐ ties an opportunity to be heard and applies the correct legal framework under Rule 702, we are satisfied. See Gopalratnam v. Hewlett‐Packard Co., 877 F.3d 771, 782 (7th Cir. 2017). Before the district court, defendants K & B and Wharton argued that the opinions of plaintiffs’ experts Mike DiTallo and Adam Grill were speculative conclusions not based on the facts of the case. Citing Federal Rule of Evidence 702, which requires that the expert testimony be “based on suffi‐ cient facts or data” and “the product of reliable principles and methods,” the district court agreed. In particular, the district court was concerned that Grill’s report cited barely any case‐ specific evidence and failed to explain the method he used, and that when he was asked about these same issues at his deposition, he did not provide any further detail. We find no abuse of discretion here; the district court clearly applied Rule 702 and excluded Grill’s report on the basis of specific, iden‐ tifiable problems with regard to relevant factors. The district court’s exclusion of the DiTallo report is a closer call, but we find no abuse of discretion. DiTallo cau‐ tioned that “there is not enough data to perform a detailed crash reconstruction in this matter,” such that he could not say for certain whether the accident happened as Perez testi‐ fied it did. Based on the limited data available to him, though, DiTallo opined that Perez’s version of events was possible but Wharton’s was not physically possible. In particular, he relied 8 No. 19‐2984 on photographic evidence of the site of impact on Perez’s ve‐ hicle to conclude that Perez could not have been coming from the left shoulder at the time of the collision. In DiTallo’s view, the site of impact, the right rear of the car, is consistent with Perez’s version of events but not Wharton’s (in which the trac‐ tor‐trailer would have hit the car’s side). Plaintiffs argue on appeal that DiTallo’s limited conclu‐ sions were appropriate and reliable in relation to the limited evidence available to him. Though the district court was not specific in its reason for excluding DiTallo’s report, it appears that the court found it too indeterminate and, as the court wrote, not “sufficiently grounded in the facts of this case,” de‐ spite its modest conclusions. On abuse‐of‐discretion review, we cannot overturn this ruling. Nonetheless, genuine issues of material fact remain even after the exclusion of Grill’s and DiTallo’s reports.
After exclusion of plaintiﬀs’ experts, the plaintiﬀs’ case rests on the testimony of Wharton, Perez, and another driver who witnessed the collision; the trooper’s crash report; and photographs of the damage to both vehicles. This record raises genuine issues of material fact as to whether Wharton was driving at a safe speed given the treacherous weather conditions. Accordingly, summary judgment was inappropri‐ ate. First, the record presents the trier of fact with two plausi‐ ble and conflicting versions of how Perez’s car spun out of control. Without conclusive expert evidence, this is a classic jury question in which Wharton’s credibility must be weighed against Perez’s. See generally, e.g., Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, No. 19‐2984 9 Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 255 (1986) (“Credibility determinations, the weighing of the evidence, and the drawing of legitimate in‐ ferences from the facts are jury functions, not those of a judge, whether he is ruling on a motion for summary judgment or for a directed verdict.”). Second, our precedents have long recognized that “it is the general rule in Illinois that it is negligence as a matter of law to drive an automobile at such a rate of speed that it cannot be stopped in time to avoid a collision with an object discern‐ ible within the driver’s length of vision ahead of him.” Carter v. Williams, 361 F.2d 189, 193–94 (7th Cir. 1966). (It appears that there was only about one truck length between Perez’s and Wharton’s vehicles at the moment when Perez began to spin.) Given the icy conditions, mere compliance with the posted speed limit in this incident is not necessarily enough to avoid liability. See 625 ILCS 5/11‐601 (drivers have a duty to decrease their speed under hazardous weather conditions). The appropriate speed under the circumstances is a fact‐in‐ tensive question, highly contested by both sides, and the kind of reasonableness determination that is best suited for a jury. See, e.g., Surdyk v. Indiana Harbor Belt R. Co., 148 F.2d 795, 797 (7th Cir. 1945) (“It is well established law in Illinois, as well as in other jurisdictions, needing no citation of authorities, that human conduct must be judged by human standards; that negligence does not become a question of law alone, unless the acts constituting it are of such a character that all reason‐ able men would concur in pronouncing them so.”). The dis‐ trict court relied on Wharton’s testimony as to her speed at impact. The more critical inquiry is how fast Wharton was go‐ ing before she began braking in response to Perez’s spin, and whether this speed and her following distance were safe un‐ der the circumstances. 10 No. 19‐2984 The record is not clear on Wharton’s pre‐braking speed, again pitting Wharton’s recollections against Perez’s in a cred‐ ibility contest that is more appropriate for a jury. As to her pre‐impact speed, Wharton testified, “I’m not for sure, but I know I wasn’t going faster than 60.” Immediately before the accident, Wharton’s truck was in tenth gear, in which it can travel as fast as 64 miles per hour. Perez testified only that he was keeping pace with traﬃc and that he estimated traﬃc to be moving between 15 and 30 miles per hour due to condi‐ tions. He estimated that three seconds elapsed between his vehicle losing traction and the collision. Third, though “no presumption of negligence arises merely from the fact of a rear end collision,” we have long recognized that a jury may reasonably infer negligence under Illinois law in such circumstances. Zink v. Radewald, 369 F.2d 253, 255 (7th Cir. 1966) (emphasis added). Trooper Kenny’s report and the photographic evidence are clear on this point: Wharton’s truck struck Perez’s vehicle on the right rear. That fact does not show conclusively that she was not driving with ordinary care under the circumstances (i.e., the record on this point does not support summary judgment for either side), but it could support a jury verdict in Perez’s favor. The judgment of the district court is REVERSED and the case is REMANDED for trial.