Opinion ID: 2778508
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Exclusion of Iwand’s Ultimate Opinion

Text: The district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding Iwand’s opinion that the axle failures were caused by corrosion pits that Progress Rail failed to remove when it reconditioned the axles. Iwand could not say when the corrosion pits formed on the DeWitt and Martin Bay axles. He also could not trace the fatigue cracks that caused the axles to fail to specific corrosion pits. Progress Rail argued to the district court that in the absence of such information, there existed too great an analytical gap -7- between the data and Iwand’s ultimate opinion and that his opinion was thus unreliable. Progress Rail pointed to the fact that a number of months had passed from the time Progress Rail had reconditioned the axles to the time the axles failed: fifteen months in the case of the DeWitt derailment; five months with respect to the Martin Bay derailment. During discovery, Union Pacific admitted that corrosion pits can form in a matter of weeks under certain conditions, and Iwand acknowledged in his expert report that “corrosion rates are inherently difficult to predict.” Iwand testified at trial that certain photographs depicted abrasive marks passing over and through corrosion pitting on the axle journals, indicating that Progress Rail did not remove all of the corrosion pitting when it reconditioned the axles. Iwand’s interpretation of the photographs supports his opinion that Progress Rail failed to remove corrosion pitting. Iwand, however, could not determine which corrosion pits caused the axles to fail, and he did not determine which corrosion pits developed on the axles after Progress Rail reconditioned them.3 In light of this evidence, the district court fairly could have determined that a gap existed between the data and Iwand’s ultimate opinion. Union Pacific argues that Iwand considered and ruled out other potential causes for the axle failures and that his process-of-elimination methodology formed a reliable basis for his opinion. Iwand, however, did not distinguish between the corrosion pits that Progress Rail allegedly failed to remove and those that formed 3 Union Pacific argues that Iwand “identified the specific corrosion pitting in the axle that caused the [Martin Bay] derailment,” citing Iwand’s trial testimony that certain photographs showed corrosion pitting associated with fatigue cracks on the Martin Bay axle. Iwand’s testimony supports his opinion that corrosion pitting preexisted Progress Rail’s reconditioning of the axles, but Union Pacific has cited no evidence to substantiate the opinion that the corrosion pitting he identified caused the Martin Bay axle to fail. -8- after the axles left Progress Rail’s facility. Accordingly, even assuming that Iwand’s process-of-elimination methodology was otherwise reliable, the district court did not abuse its discretion in excluding his ultimate opinion, given that Iwand could not rule out the possibility that the axle failures were caused by corrosion pits or other surface defects that formed after the axles left Progress Rail’s facility. The district court’s ruling was not based on the conclusion that Iwand’s methodology generated, nor did the district court apply a more stringent standard to Union Pacific’s expert evidence than it did to Progress Rail’s. Iwand and Dr. Brown conducted similar inspections of the axles, and Union Pacific presented to the jury the data Iwand gathered from his inspection and the opinions that that data supported. We agree with the district court’s characterization of its order as narrow, in that it addressed the gap between the data and Iwand’s proffered opinion and excluded only his ultimate opinion that the axle failures were caused by corrosion pits that Progress Rail failed to remove. See Joiner, 522 U.S. at 146. Thus, the district court properly exercised its gatekeeping function in excluding Iwand’s ultimate opinion as unreliable.