Opinion ID: 4157942
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Excluding Appellants’ experts was error

Text: The district court abused its discretion in excluding the testimony and opinions of Appellants’ experts. See Messick v. Novartis Pharm. Corp., 747 F.3d 1193, 1199 (9th Cir. 2014). Ned Wolfe, an experienced mechanical engineer, opined that a solenoid 8 clamp lock was an alternative, safer design used in industrial mixers, washing machines, and other industrial equipment to keep them closed until their spinning machinery comes to a stop. Although Wolfe had worked on cases involving blenders and food grinders and was familiar with solenoid clamp locks used in industrial mixers and washing machines, the district court excluded his testimony because he: (1) could point to no commercial kitchen equipment that uses solenoid clamp locks; (2) did not show that the proposed design has gained general acceptance in the scientific community; and (3) had no experience with solenoid clamp locks on grinders like the one at issue here. But a plaintiff is not required to show that an alternative, safer design is already used in similar products or has gained industry acceptance, as a product’s compliance with “industry custom or usage is irrelevant to the issue of defect.” Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co., 174 Cal. Rptr. 348, 378 (Ct. App. 1981). Given that a plaintiff need not show an alternative, safer design is already used in similar products, it follows that her expert is not required to have experience with that safer design in such products. Otherwise, “there could be no first case demanding improvement of an unsafe (but widely accepted) product design.” Oswalt v. Resolute Indus., Inc., 642 F.3d 856, 863 (9th Cir. 2011). The district court also faulted Wolfe for not conducting tests or scientific analysis of his proposed safer design. But the reliability of an expert’s theory turns 9 on whether it “can be tested,” Messick, 747 F.3d at 1197, not whether he has tested it himself. Wolfe’s alternative design was capable of being tested; ITW simply chose not to do so, despite bearing the burden under the risk-benefit test to prove that adapting the solenoid clamp lock to the grinder was not feasible. Nor could Wolfe be excluded for failing to subject the proposed design to peer review. Exclusion of experts due to lack of peer review reflects a rote, mechanical application of Rule 702 that this court has rejected in products liability cases where “[p]eer reviewed scientific literature may be unavailable because the issue may be too particular, new, or of insufficiently broad interest, to be in the literature.” Primiano v. Cook, 598 F.3d 558, 565 (9th Cir. 2010) as amended (Apr. 27, 2010); White v. Ford Motor Co., 312 F.3d 998, 1007 (9th Cir. 2002), opinion amended on denial of reh’g, 335 F.3d 833 (9th Cir. 2003). For similar reasons, it was error to exclude Appellants’ expert Douglas Bennett, an electrical engineer. Among other topics, Bennett testified that an employee’s splicing of wires in the grinder did not affect the operation of the stop button. This testimony was relevant to rebut ITW’s affirmative defense that such splicing caused Ramirez’s injuries. The district court excluded Bennett’s opinions because he lacked familiarity with the grinder “in its intended, pristine condition” and had no “experience with commercial food equipment.” But the “lack of particularized expertise goes to the 10 weight accorded [an expert’s] testimony, not to the admissibility of her opinion as an expert.” United States v. Garcia, 7 F.3d 885, 890 (9th Cir. 1993); Exum v. Gen. Elec. Co., 819 F.2d 1158, 1163 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (holding it was error to find that engineer who lacked expertise in “kitchen design” and had “never examined a kitchen of a fast food restaurant” was unqualified to testify in products liability action against manufacturer of industrial fryer). REVERSED and REMANDED. 11