Opinion ID: 619286
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Fraudulent Concealment Claims

Text: Common law fraudulent concealment under California law requires that “the defendant must have been under a duty to disclose some fact to the plaintiff.” Hahn v. Mirda, 54 Cal. Rptr. 3d 527, 530 (Cal. Ct. App. 2007). Because Ford was under no duty to disclose the failure rate of the ignition locks in the Focus, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment on this ground. 1 Plaintiffs also appeal two related evidentiary rulings by the district court. First, plaintiffs appeal the district court’s consideration, over objection, of an affidavit submitted by Ford from Paul Taylor, Ph.D, an expert in mechanical engineering. Dr. Taylor opined that the ignition lock defect at issue could not result in an inability to turn off the engine. We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that Dr. Taylor’s opinion was the product of reliable principles and methods. See Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharm., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 593-94 (1993). Second, plaintiffs argue that the district court abused its discretion by refusing to admit records from Ford’s AWS warranty database and Ford’s Customer Quality Indicator System based on a determination that they were inadmissible hearsay. Because plaintiffs do not dispute that these records were hearsay and offer unpersuasive arguments as to why they fall under an exception, we conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in ruling them inadmissible. Further, given the apparent unreliability of the records in demonstrating ignition lock-failures, the plaintiffs were not prejudiced by this decision. -4-