Opinion ID: 6317316
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Motions to Exclude

Text: We now turn to review the district court’s evidentiary rulings holding as moot the motions to exclude Kress and Loudon. In the absence of the testimony of defect experts Sero6 and Bloch,7 6 Plaintiffs retained electrical engineer Samuel Sero to determine “within a reasonable degree of engineering certainty, whether the design of the 2008 Kia Optima is defective in that its cruise control system can cause an unwanted acceleration.” (Sero Report, R. 307-1, PageID # 6943). Sero conducted a post-crash examination of Parks’ Kia Optima and determined that the vehicle was susceptible to malfunction “by unwanted changes in input voltage values that can be misinterpreted by the computer programming and result in an unwanted acceleration.” (Id.). Beginning Sero’s report is a review of the history of EMI-induced acceleration events, particularly starting in the early 1980s, which noted “[t]he rapid expansion of the use of electronic and electrical vehicles.” (Id. at PageID # 6946). Acknowledging the “consummate hazard” in any vehicle “that it will accelerate on its own and without warning” due to “uncontrolled inputs into the [electronic engine controller],” Sero went on to identify various design options that can mitigate or prevent a sudden acceleration event. (Id. at PageID ## 6943–44; see id. at PageID ## 6946–47 (exploring design alternatives)). He then turned to the instant case. Sero postulated that the 2008 Kia Optima was defective because it may cause an unwanted activation of the cruise control in which the throttle motor is activated, thereby causing an un-commanded acceleration. Put differently, Sero stated that the throttle motor went into near wide-open throttle; the malfunction of the cruise control would have sustained that condition by ignoring any brake input. The district court excluded Sero’s evidence as unreliable within the meaning of Rule 702 and Daubert. According to the district court, to allow his testimony that the 2008 Kia Optima was defective insofar as EMI could cause the cruise control to send a sustained open command to the ETC would be to admit the “untested, unpublished, and unaccepted view that EMI can cause a sustained, unintended acceleration.” (Order, R. 341, PageID # 13021). To the extent Sero posited a design defect claim, that too was excluded because it presumed that EMI could cause unintended acceleration. 7 Plaintiffs retained automobile safety-design and vehicle crashworthiness expert Byron Bloch to review what he viewed as various design defects in the subject car, focusing on the clock spring and the possibility of unanticipated Nos. 20-5690/5693 Hill, et al. v. Kia Motors Am., Inc., et al. Page 9 the district court denied as moot Defendants’ motions to exclude Kress and Loudon, reasoning that their testimonies did not bear on the dispositive question of whether a specific defect could cause unintended acceleration. A brief review of Loudon’s and Kress’ expert reports and the parties’ concomitant briefing is illuminating. After conducting testing in an exemplar 2008 Kia Optima, Steven Loudon, an electrical engineer, concluded that Parks’ vehicle, on the day of the accident, experienced errant signals from the cruise control switch that caused the Optima to accelerate for a prolonged period and caused the crash. Loudon theorized that the design of the cruise control system in the 2008 Kia Optima was defective because it used a single wire through an unreliable clock spring harness. Undergirding Loudon’s argument is a criticism of Kia’s diagnostic software routines, which he describes as defective and incapable of detecting and mitigating the effects of the errant signals. Human-factors engineering science expert Dr. Tyler Kress opined that “th[is] accident is consistent with an electronic vehicle malfunction” (Kress Report, R. 317-3, Page ID # 10136), and there was “a feasible alternative design that could have prevented the subject accident.” (Id. at PageID # 10142). Kress positioned his findings from a human factors’ perspective, proffering that a driver typically perceives and corrects accidental application of the accelerator pedal within 1.5 erratic voltages, i.e., EMI or “cross-talk.” Bloch posited that the clock spring design was susceptible to EMI because it contains multiple electrical connections in close proximity; and EMI within the clock spring could send a sustained, wide-open throttle command to the ETC. He concluded “that the clock-spring and its connections, in the 2008 Kia Optima at-issue, caused . . . cross[-]talk (e.g., unanticipated erratic voltages) that adversely affected the Cruise Control, and which prompted it to kick into an open-throttle condition.” (Bloch Report, R. 313-1, PageID # 7795). The district court found that Bloch’s conclusions were not reliable within the meaning of Rule 702 and Daubert because the theory (that EMI can occur in the clock spring) was too attenuated from the conclusion (the clock spring EMI can cause the automobile to accelerate without driver input). Bloch’s four other theories were irrelevant because they did nothing to fill this gap. As with Sero’s EMI theory, Bloch’s parallel cross-talk theory lacked testing, peer review, publication, and general acceptance, prompting the court to grant in part the motion to exclude Bloch’s testimony. Nos. 20-5690/5693 Hill, et al. v. Kia Motors Am., Inc., et al. Page 10 seconds. (Id. at PageID # 10206; id. at PageID # 10136 (“Like vehicle malfunctions, such a series of human errors (pedal misapplication, flooring it, and failing to correct these actions) is very rare . . . .”)). From post-crash vehicle inspections and the injuries to Parks’ lower extremities, Kress concluded Parks’ right foot could have been on or off the brake pedal before impact. After finding that circumstantial evidence evinced proper handling, Kress concluded that the subject acceleration event was not attributable to driver error but to some malfunction in the vehicle’s computer-based, electronic operation. The question on appeal is whether the district court’s holding the testimony of Kress and Loudon as moot amounted to an abuse of discretion. Under Defendants’ telling, these two remaining experts had a narrow evidentiary role at the trial court in which they only alluded to an unidentified malfunction in the Optima that might have caused the unintended acceleration—but they left it to Sero and Bloch to identify the malfunction. So, Defendants argue, Plaintiffs may not now refashion their surviving experts, Kress and Loudon, as defect experts on appeal. Contrary to the district court’s holding and the dissent’s belief, the testimonies of Kress and Loudon were not dependent on the excluded testimony of Bloch and Sero. It would also be a bridge too far, as the district court reasoned and the dissent asserts, to find that Kress and Loudon do not offer a defect theory. They do and did so consistently at the lower court. Unlike their excluded brethren, Kress and Loudon premise their defect theories primarily upon circumstantial evidence. Plaintiffs made this clear below as to Loudon: “Mr. Loudon’s testing, on the other hand, provides strong circumstantial proof of the cause of Mrs. Parks’ event.” (Pls.’ Resp. & Mem. in Opp’n to Exclude Loudon, R. 322, PageID # 12637). They also made it clear that Kress planned to offer circumstantial proof of a defect; citing Kress’ report, Plaintiffs stated: “There is Nos. 20-5690/5693 Hill, et al. v. Kia Motors Am., Inc., et al. Page 11 circumstantial evidence to show that more-likely-than-not the subject accident was caused by a sudden unexpected acceleration” and “that Mary Parks clearly implemented collision avoidance driver input to attempt to control the out-of-control” vehicle, thereby demonstrating that “the collision was not the result of a pedal error or pedal misapplication by Mary Parks.” (Pls.’ Resp. & Mem. in Opp’n to Exclude Kress, R. 208, PageID # 11755; see also id. (reviewing Kress expert report on “feasible technologies . . . that could have been used to reasonably address hazards associated with potential vehicle malfunctions that can cause [sudden unintended acceleration] incidents”)). Because Kress and Loudon offered circumstantial evidence of the source and cause of the accident, we find that the district court abused its discretion in denying as moot the motions to exclude Kress and Loudon.8 We now turn to the remaining basis of Plaintiffs’ appeal, i.e., the district court’s grant of Defendants’ motion for summary judgment.