Judge reverses himself, flips $27.7M injury verdict

By Barbara L. Jones
BridgeTower Media Newswires
 
MINNEAPOLIS, MN — In January and February 2016, Ramsey County District Court Judge John Guthmann presided over a jury trial that awarded a catastrophically injured airplane pilot $27.7 million.

In August, he took it away, saying he had made a mistake in allowing the plaintiff’s expert to testify on causation because the foundation for his testimony was inadequate.

The judge didn’t order a new trial. He ordered judgment for the defendant, Lycoming Engines, as a matter of law.

Guthmann wrote, “New trial motions give the trial court time to reflect on the case, ‘consider the context in which the alleged error occurred, and the effect it might have had on the outcome of the litigation,’ and an opportunity to correct its own errors without subjecting the parties to an unnecessary appeal.”  (Guthmann cited Sauter v. Wasemiller, a 1986 Minnesota Supreme Court case.)

The plaintiff’s theory was that the plane crash was caused by a defective fuel pump.

The verdict was against Lycoming Engines and Kelly Aerospace Power Systems, although it all fell on Lycoming. Lycoming designed and sold the fuel pump and outsourced its labor and assembly to Kelly Aerospace, which assembled the fuel pump according to Lycoming designs and instructions.

 Lycoming is liable for the entire verdict under Minnesota product liability law and because it was in a joint enterprise with Kelly Aerospace. Kelly is in bankruptcy and was treated as a non-party tortfeasor.

The post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law was brought under Minn. R. Civ. P. 50.01(a). It should be granted in unequivocal cases where the trial court is duty-bound to set aside a verdict because it is manifestly against the entire evidence or contrary to the applicable law of the case, the judge wrote.

Guthmann applied a three-part test from case law going back decades.

The moving party must show that the court erred and the admission or suppression of the evidence might reasonably have changed the results of the trial. The movant must also show that prejudice occurred.

Lycoming argued that plaintiff had only one causation expert, Donald Sommer, and without his causation testimony, the case failed as a matter of law.

Under Rule 702, the party offering expert testimony must establish that the witness qualified as an expert, the expert opinion had foundational reliability, the expert evidence will be helpful to the jury and, in certain cases, that the Frye-Mack standard for reliability of scientific evidence had been met.

The judge had repeatedly denied motions to exclude the testimony.

Guthmann said that foundation was laid for Sommers to testify in accordance with his training and experience.

But the defense argued that Sommers was not qualified to testify about “engine-driven diaphragm fuel pumps’ because he never previously worked with such a pump.

That did not necessarily prohibit the evidence because any shortcomings went to the weight, not the admissibility of the evidence.

If his opinions were otherwise admissible, they could have been helpful to the jury.

But not all Sommers’ opinions had foundational reliability, Guthmann continued.

The expert’s opinion must be sufficiently reliable so that the testimony is not speculative and is helpful to the fact-finder.

While it was clear that evidence supported the jury’s determination that the pump was defective, the issue of causation was a different matter.

For three separate reasons the court said it erred by refusing the directed-verdict motion.

First, Sommer’s testimony that plaintiff’s fuel pump failed to perform as designed lacked foundational reliability because it wasn’t tested properly. The fuel pump may have performed exactly as designed and that is central to a scientific inquiry about causation, Guthmann wrote.

“[A]ny opinion that defects in the … fuel pump adversely impacted its performance enough to cause plaintiff’s airplane to crash is foundationally reliable only if a scientifically valid test of the pump’s performance to its specifications was conducted,” said the court.

It was not, Guthmann continued. “Mr. Sommer tested the performance of the accident pump using an inherently unreliable methodology,” the judge wrote.

Second, the expert’s causation opinion should have been excluded because he offered no scientifically reliable explanation for the undisputed fact that the accident fuel pump supplied fuel to plaintiff’s aircraft engine for 312 hours without any reported problems.

There was no foundational support that would permit the jury to conclude that the continuously present fuel-pump defects could impact flight operation on one day and not on other days, the court said.

Third, Sommer’s post-accident testing demonstrated that plaintiff’s engine produced sufficient power to fly the aircraft despite the defects found in the fuel pump, Guthmann said.

He conceded that the airplane was capable of flight despite the existence of defects in the pump.

All in all, “[The expert’s testimony] was entirely speculative and it flew in the fact of the scientific foundation he told the jury a valid causation required. After closely examining the record in a way that was not possible at trial, the court reaches the inescapable conclusion that the objection to [the experts] causation should have been granted.  Absent a causation opinion, the directed verdict motion should have been granted. Lycoming is entitled to more than a new trial—it is entitled to judgment as a matter of law,” Guthmann said.

Lycoming issued a statement by way of its attorney, Daniel Haws. “Lycoming is pleased that after a thorough review of the trial proceedings, Judge Guthmann has determined that Lycoming is not liable in this case and there was no evidence that Lycoming’s fuel pump caused or contributed to this tragic accident.  We appreciate the court’s dedication to providing a fair and just resolution to this case, as detailed in his comprehensive 55-page decision.

Plaintiff’s counsel could not be reached for comment.

Even though he had decided the case, the judge didn’t stop there. 

He ruled on all the submitted issues because it may help the parties, he said.

 If not for the JMOL, a new trial would have been ordered based on attorney misconduct, the court said.

The defendant argued that the plaintiff committed attorney misconduct in three categories. The first was the plaintiff violated in limine rulings barring any reference to alleged prior failures of fuel pumps.

“[T]he cumulative impact of plaintiff’s repeated violations of pre-trial orders prohibiting evidence and arguments about prior failures…[was] so prejudicial and inflammatory that Lycoming’s right to a fair trial was substantially prejudiced,” Guthmann wrote.

Similarly, the plaintiff committed misconduct by making disparaging references to Lycoming and suggested that Lycoming was no different than other corporate bad actors in defending the case.

“It was improper and prejudicial for counsel to suggest that it is shameful or offensive for a party to assert a legal right,” Guthmann wrote. The cumulative effective of the corporate conduct arguments along with the improper arguments about the fuel pumps would have warranted a new trial on the issue of liability, he wrote.

The judge also outlined how the damage award should be reduced and offsets for collateral sources applied.