Opinion ID: 61649
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidentiary Burden.

Text: Appellants nevertheless maintain that they presented sufficient evidence, in the form of expert testimony, that FPL breached the Dose Limits. In its Omnibus Order, the district court excluded the testimony of Arnold Gundersen, Martin Resnikoff, Stanley Waligora, Christopher Busby, and Robert Peter Gale under the principles of 10 Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). Appellants focus their appellate argument on the exclusion of their “dose calculation” experts: Gundersen, Resnikoff, and Waligora. Aside from a single footnote in their initial brief, Appellants do not discuss Gale and Busby, two of their “causation” experts. Because we do not reach the issue of causation unless Appellants can show they have sufficient evidence of a breach of the Dose Limits, this Court will focus its initial inquiry on the dose calculation experts. To that end, Appellants argue that although the district court couched its ruling in terms of their “reliability,” it is clear from the Omnibus Order that the dose calculation experts’ testimony was excluded only because their conclusions conflicted with those of the NRC. A district court’s decision to exclude expert testimony is reviewed for an abuse of discretion. See Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137, 152 (1999). “That standard applies as much to the trial court’s decisions about how to determine reliability as to its ultimate conclusion.” Id. Therefore, “we defer to the district court’s ruling unless it is ‘manifestly erroneous,’” and “we give the district court ‘considerable leeway’ in the execution of its duty.” Rink v. Cheminova, Inc., 400 F.3d 1286, 1291 (11th Cir. 2005) (citations omitted). Pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 702, as well as Daubert and its progeny, “district courts must act as ‘gatekeepers[,’ admitting] expert testimony only if it is 11 both reliable and relevant.” Id. “To fulfil their obligation under Daubert, district courts must engage in a rigorous inquiry to determine whether: ‘(1) the expert is qualified to testify competently regarding the matters he intends to address; (2) the methodology by which the expert reaches his conclusions is sufficiently reliable as determined by the sort of inquiry mandated in Daubert; and (3) the testimony assists the trier of fact, through the application of scientific, technical, or specialized expertise, to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue.’” Id. at 1291-92 (quoting City of Tuscaloosa v. Harcros Chems., Inc., 158 F.3d 548, 562 (11th Cir. 1998)). “The party offering the expert has the burden of satisfying each of these three elements by a preponderance of the evidence.” Id. at 1292 (citing Allison v. McGhan Med. Corp., 184 F.3d 1300, 1306 (11th Cir. 1999)). “In ascertaining the reliability of a particular scientific expert opinion, we consider, to the extent possible: (1) whether the expert’s theory can be and has been tested; (2) whether the theory has been subjected to peer review and publication; (3) the known or potential rate of error of the particular scientific technique; and (4) whether the technique is generally accepted in the scientific community.” Quiet Tech. DC-8, Inc. v. Hurel-Dubois UK Ltd., 326 F.3d 1333, 1341 (11th Cir. 2003) (citing McCorvey v. Baxter Healthcare Corp., 298 F.3d 1253, 1256 (11th Cir. 2002)). “Notably, however, these factors do not exhaust the universe of considerations that 12 may bear on the reliability of a given expert opinion, and a federal court should consider any additional factors that may advance its Rule 702 analysis.” Id. (citing Kumho Tire Co., 526 U.S. at 150). Yet, a “district court’s gatekeeper role under Daubert ‘is not intended to supplant the adversary system or the role of the jury.’” Maiz v. Virani, 253 F.3d 641, 666 (11th Cir. 2001) (quoting Allison, 184 F.3d at 1311). “[V]igorous cross-examination, presentation of contrary evidence, and careful instruction on the burden of proof are the traditional and appropriate means of attacking shaky but admissible evidence.” Allison, 184 F.3d at 1311 (quoting Daubert, 509 U.S. at 596). “The judge’s role is to keep unreliable and irrelevant information from the jury because of its inability to assist in factual determinations, its potential to create confusion, and its lack of probative value.” Id. at 1311-12. After a thorough review of the dose calculation experts’ reports and testimony, it is evident that the district court did not abuse its discretion; exclusion of these experts under Daubert was appropriate. This Court does question the district court’s focus on radiation samples taken by government agencies as a “real world test” of the conclusions of Gundersen, Waligora, and Resnikoff. While reliability of an expert’s opinion can be gauged by “whether the expert’s theory can be and has been tested,” Quiet Tech. DC-8, Inc., 326 13 F.3d at 1341, the sample results by government agencies are not actual tests of these experts’ theories. In fact, there are plausible explanations that could account for the differences between these experts’ conclusions, if correct, and the sample results. However, in this case, the district court also faulted the assumptions underlying Gundersen, Waligora, and Resnikoff’s methodologies. For instance, Gundersen bases his expert conclusions on hypotheticals that begin with the assumption that a truckload of radioactive sewage plant solids shipped from the Plant for disposal in Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1991 is the material that was dug up from the Glades Cutoff site nearly a decade earlier in 1982. There is, however, no evidence to support this assumption that the 828 cubic feet of material, which weighs approximately 100,000 pounds, was from the Glades Cutoff, nor any explanation why the Plant would hold on to such a large amount of material for almost ten years. Yet, Gundersen takes the radiation concentration of the sewage solids in the 1991 shipment and extrapolates backward using decay calculations for radioactive isotopes—effectively multiplying the radiation measurement for the 1991 shipment—to conclude that the material dumped in 1982 had an excessive radiation concentration. Simply put, this is “the kind of scientifically unsupported ‘leap of faith’ which is condemned by Daubert.” Rink, 400 F.3d at 1292 (citing Rider v. Sandoz Pharms. Corp., 295 F.3d 1194, 1202 (11th Cir. 2002)). 14 Waligora and Resnikoff, authors of a joint report, also made unsupported “leaps of faith.” For example, these experts extrapolated a dose exposure calculation by using an isotope ratio that FPL submitted to the NRC in its Final Safety Analysis Report (“FSAR”) as part of its original license application. This FSAR ratio was derived from the contents of a spent fuel pool in a separate building from the source of the Glades Cutoff site sewage sludge. Using the FSAR isotope ratio, Waligora and Resnikoff concluded that other radionuclides were present in the sewage sludge and calculated a total radiation concentration in excess of the Dose Limits. However, no expert was able to provide support for the assumption that the isotope ratios in the spent fuel pool would equate to those in the sewage sludge. When questioned at his Daubert hearing, Waligora would not say that use of the FSAR ratio was appropriate or scientifically acceptable. Waligora could only testify that “it was the best thing we could go with.” The choices made and utilized by these experts differ from a situation in which an expert inputs “hard data arrived at by unassailable methods.” Rink, 400 F.3d at 1293. This is not a case where the trial court rejected experts only because their final conclusions were inconsistent with the findings of other experts or agencies. “Here, the data [these three excluded experts] produced was driven by the methodology [they] used, and thus the district court’s inquiry into how [they] arrived at the data is 15 not inappropriate.” Id. Therefore, we cannot say the district court erred when it examined and rejected unsupported assumptions underlying these three experts’ methodologies. And, without their dose calculation experts, Appellants have not presented the sufficient admissible evidence of a breach of the Dose Limits needed to survive summary judgment on their Price-Anderson Act public liability actions. Appellants nevertheless maintain that summary judgment is inappropriate because the district court found that they had been prejudiced by the failure to produce the Bailey Report. The court rejected the ultimate sanction and, instead, granted Appellants “the lesser sanction of an adverse inference in the form of a jury instruction that Defendant did not timely produce the Bailey Report.” Appellants now contend that summary judgment “rewards” FPL for its sanctionable conduct. However, there is no legal support for Appellants’ proposition that summary judgment cannot be granted in this case because the district court previously sanctioned the moving party for belated production. Moreover, discovery was extended six weeks to allow Appellants time to follow up on information garnered in the Bailey Report. It appears from the record that no additional discovery extension was sought. Apparently, this was because Appellants were eager to keep their January 2006 trial date due to concerns related to Zachary’s serious illness. We cannot find fault, therefore, with the district court’s decision to enter judgment based 16 on the evidence presented.