Opinion ID: 1791667
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Defendants' expert, Greg Miller.

Text: ¶ 56. Defendants filed their designation of expert witnesses on June 30, 2000, which was the deadline set by the trial court in its March 16, 2000, scheduling order. Greg Miller was not included. However, when defendants filed their supplemental responses to interrogatories on December 22, 2000, they stated: All defendants supplement their prior responses to state that they may call as a witness at trial Greg Miller, an engineer.... Defendants expect Mr. Miller to testify, generally speaking, regarding the pertinent airbag technology utilized in the subject vehicle, and compare it to other vehicles of the same generation. Mr. Miller is also expected to testify regarding his analysis of TRW's [11] validated data from the test lot that pertains to and includes the passenger airbag inflator for the subject vehicle, and how it compares to competitive vehicles, as well as how it compares to the tank test curve that is being relied upon by Mr. Rudnitsky for his opinions that the subject airbag was aggressive. The test lot data rebuts Mr. Rutnitsky's opinions in this regard. Specifically, Mr. Miller has obtained the ballistic tank test lot data from TRW and scaled it for comparison to the inflator information in Appendix A ..., being relied upon by Mr. Rudnitsky. Based on this comparison, the rise rate for the subject inflator is much closer to the average for the 1995 model year than the comparison conducted by Mr. Rudnitsky. By way of example, the rise rate, normalized for a 100 liter tank, is approximately 9.2 kpa/ms. Mr. Miller is also expected to testify in general rebuttal to the testimony of Mr. Rudnitsky regarding the so-called dual stage inflators that Mr. Rudnitsky claims to have been analyzed while at General Motors when he was developing the F car. To the extent the above detailed information is considered to be expert testimony, defendants hereby supplement their expert designation to list Mr. Miller. ¶ 57. When plaintiffs objected to this expert designation, six months after the deadline, the trial court found that Miller would be precluded from testifying as an expert. However, defendants persuaded the trial court to allow lay testimony from Miller. The trial judge stated that [Mr. Miller's going to] authenticate some engineering laboratory tests, or whatever, some engineering tests. He's going to testify as a fact witness. The trial court further stated that the defendants are proceeding with only factual testimony from Mr. Miller, and he will not be able to give opinion testimony. . . . Mr. Miller . . . cannot get into opinion testimony, and specifically comparisons. ¶ 58. Counsel for plaintiffs then requested a continuing objection to Miller's entire testimony, claiming that it would be expert testimony disguised as lay testimony. The trial court overruled the continuing objection, and defendants called Miller to the witness stand. ¶ 59. During his testimony (which defendants characterize as simply factual), Miller offered inter alia the following answers: Q. What different temperatures to you utilize in conducting those tests? A. Well, the procedure at the time was to conduct three ambient, which is room temperature, and one hot deployment, which is 185 degrees Fahrenheit. Q. Why would you conduct a hot deployment? A. In a worst case scenario if a car were to be sitting in Phoenix up in the instrument panel and it were to be heat soaked and you were to drive away and have a crash in a deployment, what happens with this particular type of inflation, and for that matter just about any type of inflation, is it becomes more energetic. The output can rise based on the temperature, so one of the things that we want to check is to make sure that the warmer temperature that the tank curve is still within its corridor. If it's too high, you can have trouble hanging on to the door or you can overexpand the module, that sort of thing.    Q. Would you demonstrate that for us and give us the peak pressure and rise rate based on Exhibit 46B. [12] Q. All I want is your calculation based on your experience at TRW, the calculation of the peak pressure and the rise rate on this particular one. A. If I use this as a straight edge and line it up with the marks here, looking for the approximate peak, I'm drawing a line here and saying the maximum slope occurred someplace in this 10 millisecond window here. Now, what I would do is simply pick up where this point crosses and find out where this crosses, come down here, and then you can look at what the peak pressure is based on this chart, and if you do the calculations, this is 300 kpa minus zero, and then this would be 54 milliseconds minus the 8 milliseconds here to find out what this distance is, and if you plug that in your calculator  I happen to know what the answer is  it is 6.5, and the units on that are kpa per millisecond. The peak slope over here is between these two marks which would be about 212. ¶ 60. Throughout his testimony, Miller was asked to make and explain highly technical calculations, and then apply his results to industry standards and to explain why the testing and calculations he approved were necessary. ¶ 61. The problem appears to be a misunderstanding of expert testimony. M.R.E. 702 does not limit expert testimony to that which is expressed in the form of opinion. The rule states: If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience training or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise. Miss. R. Evid. 702 (emphasis added). ¶ 62. The testimony provided by Miller, a highly-skilled, specially educated engineer, very definitely required scientific, technical knowledge beyond that of the randomly selected adult. Such testimony therefore constituted expert testimony. Cotton v. State, 675 So.2d 308, 311 (Miss. 1996), citing Sample v. State, 643 So.2d 524, 530 (Miss.1994); Miss. State Hwy. Comm'n v. Gilich, 609 So.2d 367, 377 (Miss.1992) (lay opinions require no specialized knowledge); Wells v. State, 604 So.2d 271, 279 (Miss.1992) (testimony requiring particular knowledge to assist trier of fact is expert testimony). ¶ 63. In Cotton, the controversy involved a witness who explained to the jury the mechanical features of a particular brand of gun. The witness stated that the gun would not fire unless a specific sequence of events was followed. We found that, [i]n order to assist the jury, he was indeed required to reveal particular knowledge about the Llama .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. We find that the testimony. . . constituted expert opinion. Id. at 311. ¶ 64. To be clear, the test for expert testimony is not whether it is fact or opinion. The test is whether it requires scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge beyond that of the randomly selected adult. If so, the testimony is expert in nature, and must be treated in discovery, and at trial, as such. ¶ 65. This Court has held that it will not reverse the admission or exclusion of evidence unless the error adversely affects a substantial right of a party. Crane Co. v. Kitzinger, 860 So.2d 1196, 1199 (Miss.2003) (citing Floyd v. City of Crystal Springs, 749 So.2d 110, 113 (Miss. 1999)). [F]or a case to be reversed on the admission or exclusion of evidence, it must result in prejudice and harm or adversely affect a substantial right of a party. Id. (citing Terrain Enter., Inc. v. Mockbee, 654 So.2d 1122, 1131 (Miss. 1995)). ¶ 66. On this issue, we find the conclusion reached by the Court of Appeals was exactly correct: The trial court abused it discretion by allowing Miller's testimony to stray into the realm of scientific, technical and specialized knowledge that only could be admitted as expert testimony after assessment pursuant to Rule 702. Further, the Palmers were prejudiced by Miller's impermissible expert testimony because Miller's testimony rebutted that of the Palmer's expert, Rudnitsky. Rudnitsky opined that the average air bag inflation rise rate was 6 kilopascals per millisecond, and that the Jetta inflator's rise rate was 10.5 kilopascals per millisecond. He stated that this was 84% higher than the average for 1995 cars. He also stated that the Jetta's peak pressure was 26% higher than average for 1995 cars. He concluded that the Jetta's air bag was overly aggressive. Miller calculated and charted the 1995 Jetta inflator's peak pressure and rise rate at three different temperatures. He averaged the three peak pressures and arrived at an average rise rate of 6.7 kilopascals per millisecond. He averaged the three rise rates and arrived at an average rise rate of 211 kilopascals. Rudnitsky's higher calculations were offered to show that the Jetta's air bag was aggressive, and Miller's lower calculations of the Jetta's peak pressure and rise rate were offered to rebut Rudnitsky's conclusions. The trial court had already held that the Palmers were unprepared for expert testimony by Miller. Palmer, 905 So.2d at 589, 2003 WL 22006296, at . Seat belt use by Anne Palmer and the Palmer family. ¶ 67. Defendants introduced evidence tending to show that the Palmer family did not regularly use their seat belts. The purpose of this evidence, according to defendants, was the inference that, given all the warnings and admonitions concerning seat belt use, persons who ignored such warnings would probably not heed air bag warnings. The Court of Appeals found that Jennifer's seat belt use was admissible, [13] but the rest of the family's was not. The reason stated by the Court of Appeals for finding seat belt use by Anne Palmer and the Palmer family inadmissible, was that such evidence could have been interpreted as negligence, violating Miss.Code Ann. § 63-2-3, which provides: This chapter shall not be construed to create a duty, standard of care, right or liability between the operator and passenger of any passenger motor vehicle which is not recognized under the laws of the State of Mississippi as such laws exist on the date of passage of this chapter or as such laws may at any time thereafter be constituted by statute or court decision. Failure to provide and use a seat belt restraint device or system shall not be considered contributory or comparative negligence, nor shall the violation be entered on the driving record of any individual. ¶ 68. In Estate of Hunter v. General Motors Corp., 729 So.2d 1264 (Miss.1999), General Motors persuaded the trial court to admit evidence of seat belt non-use. On appeal, we held: This Court concludes that evidence of seat belt non-usage may constitute relevant evidence in some (but by no means all or even most) cases, so long as (1) the evidence has some probative value other than as evidence of negligence; (2) this probative value is not substantially outweighed by its prejudicial effect (See Miss. R. Evid. 403) and is not barred by some other rule of evidence and (3) appropriate limiting instructions are given to the jury, barring the consideration of seat belt non-usage as evidence of negligence. Estate of Hunter, 729 So.2d at 1268. Since no limiting instruction was given in Hunter, this Court found reversible error. See also Herring v. Poirrier, 797 So.2d 797 (Miss.2000) (use of seat belts admissible on the issue of injuries and their severity). See also Golonka v. General Motors Corp., 204 Ariz. 575, 65 P.3d 956 (Ct.App.2003); Graves v. Church & Dwight Co., 267 N.J.Super. 445, 631 A.2d 1248 (Ct.App.Div. 1993) (plaintiff's smoking notwithstanding cigarette warning labels was relevant evidence as to whether he would have followed adequate warning on baking soda) (plaintiff's propensity for following other warnings in her truck's owner's manual could cause jury to infer that she would have heeded better warning about shifting defect); ¶ 69. Inadequate warnings cannot serve as the proximate cause of injuries where adequate warnings would have resulted in the same injuries. Where a plaintiff claims inadequate warnings, the defendant must be allowed to introduce evidence which would tend to persuade a jury that, even if the warnings had been adequate, the plaintiff would not have heeded them. Where, as here, evidence of non-use of seat belts is offered for that purpose, and provided it passes all other tests of admissibility, it may be admitted. The trial court should caution the jury and instruct it on the limited use of the evidence. ¶ 70. In this case, the trial court was correct to admit the evidence, but should have given a cautionary instruction. On remand, however, the adequacy of warnings will not be an issue, and the evidence of seat belt use by the Palmer family (other than Jennifer) will not be relevant.