Opinion ID: 2793905
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Dr. Kytomaa’s Opinion Testimony.

Text: Dr. Kytomaa is a Vice President and Director of the Thermal Sciences practice at Exponent, an engineering and scientific consultant firm. He has held academic and research positions at various universities, has published many articles on topics such as fire origins and liquified natural gas transportation, and has been involved in hundreds of fire investigations. He is a Certified Fire Investigator and a Certified Fire and Explosion Investigator but has not published on CSST and could not recall working on any fires that involved lightning. He is not a metallurgist but has studied the strength of materials and the characteristics of metals. The district court qualified Kytomaa as an expert in materials, mechanical engineering, fire, cause and origin, code reviews, and electrical causation. Dr. Kytomaa’s testimony primarily addressed fire causation, disagreeing with Dr. Eagar and AAIC’s other experts as to the cause of the fire. In developing his opinion, Dr. Kytomaa reviewed the depositions of expert and fact witnesses and the photographs taken of the Kostecki home, and he personally inspected the “subject TracPipe, the CSST in this matter.” He also conducted some general scientific tests that he used to challenge Dr. Eagar’s opinions that arcing from the indirect lightning could have caused the holes in the TracPipe and ignited escaping propane. The district court denied AAIC’s motion to exclude Dr. Kytomaa’s opinion testimony, -8- concluding that he had sufficient expertise in fire causation and that his opinions were sufficiently grounded in scientific literature and testing. On appeal, AAIC primarily argues that the district court unevenly applied the law when it excluded part of Dr. Eagar’s testimony yet allowed Dr. Kytomaa’s testimony. We disagree. The district court’s careful opinions properly applied Daubert’s flexible standard to the distinct issues on which each expert would opine. Dr. Eagar testified at length regarding black iron pipe; Dr. Kytomaa did not. Neither testified on the ultimate issue of product defect. AAIC essentially argues that Dr. Eagar had more qualifications and therefore Dr. Kytomaa should not have been allowed to refute Dr. Eagar’s opinions. But that contention is inconsistent with Daubert, which requires a “flexible” inquiry that “grants a district court the same broad latitude when it decides how to determine reliability as it enjoys in respect to its ultimate reliability determination.” Kumho Tire, 526 U.S. at 141-42. We have consistently upheld the admission of expert testimony as to the cause of a fire when the expert applied specialized knowledge to observations of a fire scene that had record support. See Shuck v. CNH Am., LLC, 498 F.3d 868, 875 (8th Cir. 2007); Hickerson v. Pride Mobility Prods. Corp., 470 F.3d 1252, 1256-57 (8th Cir. 2006). Dr. Kytomaa’s extensive credentials qualified him as an expert in fire causation. He based his opinions on that experience and his examination of the fire scene and the TracPipe involved. While Dr. Kytomaa was not a metallurgist or lightning expert, his testimony only touched upon those fields as relevant to the subject of fire causation, his area of expertise. “Gaps in an expert witness’s qualifications or knowledge generally go to the weight of the witness’s testimony, not its admissibility.” Robinson v. GEICO Gen. Ins. Co., 447 F.3d 1096, 1100 (8th Cir. 2006) (quotation omitted). After careful review of the district court’s rulings and Dr. Kytomaa’s trial testimony, we conclude that, as in Cincinnati Ins. Co. v. Bluewood, Inc., 560 F.3d -9- 798, 808 (8th Cir. 2009), AAIC “has failed to identify any deficiency in either the district court’s application of Rule 702 or its discharge of the ‘gatekeeping function’ under Daubert and Kumho Tire.” The district court committed no clear and prejudicial abuse of discretion in permitting the jury to consider testimony from wellqualified experts who presented conflicting theories as to the cause of the unusual and unfortunate fire that destroyed the Kosteckis’ home.