Expert testimony excluded in product liability case

Where a restaurant server claimed she was injured by a defective tea brewer, but her professional engineer expert never examined the actual brewer and there was no testimony that the brewer he examined was the same model, his opinion was excluded as unreliable.

Background

In early 2019, Diana Lettie-Marie Crummett worked as a server at Fredericksburg’s Country Cookin’ restaurant. As part of her server duties, she attempted to brew tea on the restaurant’s tea brewer. But the filter basket on the tea brewer detached and fell onto her, causing burn injuries.

Crummett asserts three claims against the tea brewer’s distributor, Royal Cup Inc.: negligence, breach of implied warranty and breach of express warranty. Royal Cup now moves to exclude Crummett’s expert, Mr. Byron Reed, Professional Engineer, and for summary judgment on all of Crummett’s claims.

Expert

Mr. Reed proposes two theories of causation: (1) that the failure to install a locking device caused Crummett’s injuries and (2) that Royal Cup’s failure to educate tea brewer operators on the hazards of the funnel’s discharge and position caused Crummett’s injuries. Mr. Reed fails to support either theory with sufficient facts or data.

Despite the availability of the tea brewer, Mr. Reed did not conduct any testing on it prior to submitting his expert report. Crummett asserts, however, that Mr. Reed examined “exemplars” of the subject tea maker. When the court pressed Mr. Reed to explain what “exemplars” he examined, he said that he looked at a tea brewer in a restaurant, which he “believe[s]” was the same model as the subject tea brewer in this case.

But that tea brewer did not have a filter basket and Mr. Reed presented no evidence that he conducted any relevant tests on it. Without any proof or testimony confirming that the tea brewer in the restaurant was the same model as the tea brewer in this case, the court does not accept that brewer as an appropriate exemplar; and, even if it did, Mr. Reed’s cursory appraisal of the filter-basketless brewer fails to meet the reliability testing standards of Rule 702.

The lack of testing proves dispositive because Mr. Reed has failed to present other evidence to support his opinion. Though he refers to certain industry standards that he says apply generally to machines, the standards in his report support only discrete statements and he provides insufficient facts or data apart from his own knowledge to support his application of the standards to the tea brewer here. The court thus finds Mr. Reed’s testimony unreliable under Rule 702.

Negligence and implied warranty

To prevail on her negligence and breach of implied warranty claims, Crummett must prove that the product, as designed, was unreasonably dangerous and that Royal Cup’s breach of duty proximately caused her injuries. Without expert testimony, Crummett cannot satisfy her burdens of proof.

Crummett lacks evidence of relevant safety standards to establish some objective basis by which to judge Crummett’s claims under either theory. And, without any testimony on how the imprudent machine design would have caused Crummett’s injury, a jury could not “properly proceed to find a verdict” for Crummett.

Crummett says that her claims survive “even without supplemental expert testimony” because “Bunn . . . identified the defective and hazardous condition” and “designed and implemented solutions that held the basket in place during the brewing process.” This, however, misinterprets the requirements of Virginia products liability law. Because Crummett fails to present objective evidence to support these claims, the court will grant Royal Cup’s motion as to the negligence and breach of implied warranty claims.

Express warranty

Unlike the negligence and breach of implied warranty claims, breach of express warranty claim relies, at least in part, on facts that exist outside the world of expert testimony: the state of the filter basket at the time of the incident; the maintenance services Royal Cup provided what else happened that day.

But, because Royal Cup has cited no additional evidence to support the argument that paragraph three of the agreement did not form a basis of the bargain and the briefs neglect to address this claim at all, the court has come no closer to answering these questions. Without any new facts to demonstrate that Royal Cup’s affirmation does not, in fact, constitute a part of the parties’ bargain, and without facts showing, for example, the condition of the filter basket at the time of the incident or that Royal Cup fulfilled its express warranty, the court will deny Royal Cup’s motion for summary judgment as to Crummett’s breach of express warranty claim

Defendant’s motion for summary judgment granted in part, denied in part.

Crummett v. Bunn-o-matic Corporation, Case No. 3:21-cv-120, Nov. 24, 2021. EDVA at Richmond (Gibney). VLW 021-3-532. 14 pp.