We just got tickets to see "Wicked" again (we think this will be the fourth or fifth time). Since we first saw it (on Broadway in 2003, featuring Idina Menzel's Tony-winning performance), we have loved this quirky and oh-so-creative imagining of the backstory of "the Witches of Oz" – Galinda (later, without the first "a," the "Good Witch of the North") and Elphaba, the viridescent lass who, in Baum's classics, grew up to achieve infamy as the "Wicked Witch of the West" – beginning with their days as schoolgirls and reluctant roommates. We are eternally charmed by the subtle scarecrow-Toto-Dorothy references woven throughout (we notice at least one new one every time we see the show) and we never tire of the score ("Defying Gravity," "For Good"). We also don't think it puts too fine a point on it to appreciate the resonance of a character whose life is shaped by a childhood in which she never "fit" and to be gratified by her unlikely happy ending.
And in this manner (wait 'til you see this tie-in), the lesson diverges from unhappy ending of the plaintiff's expert metallurgist in today's case, whose conclusions were excluded, in part, because they did not "fit" the facts of the case and the issues the expert had considered. In its (regrettably) unpublished and (not regrettably) short decision in Redd v. DePuy Orthopedics, Inc., 2017 WL 2859536 (8th Cir. June 6 2017), which features an appearance by our beloved "sham affidavit doctrine," the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reviewed the Eastern District of Missouri's decision excluding the plaintiff's expert's "defect" and "causation" testimony and granting summary judgment for the defendant.
In Redd, the plaintiff – five feet tall, 302 pounds, and taking immunosuppressant drugs – received a total hip replacement using the defendant's artificial hip. Four years later, the hip stem fractured. When it was removed, "doctors learned that it had not properly grown into the bone at the top of [the plaintiff's] hip," 2017 WL 2859536 at *1. Plaintiff's doctors were aware of this risk, heightened by the plaintiff's marked obesity and her medications. The plaintiff was implanted with a second hip stem, which similarly fractured less than two years later.
The plaintiff filed suit, asserting the usual negligence, strict liability, and manufacturing defect claims. She retained her metallurgy expert to opine about the cause of the hip stems' fractures. The expert "had done research in fatigue fracture initiation in metal objects but not in metal objects implanted in the human body. His analysis considered metallurgical factors but not any biomechanical factors (such as a hip stem's failure to grow into the hip bone . . .)." Id. He also "did not review any records related to the manufacturing process . . . ." Id. He opined that the fracture of the plaintiff's hip stem was caused by the improper "phase" of the metal along with the "grain size" of the metal alloy (metallurgical terms of art, we assume). He "acknowledged that environmental factors could have also contributed to the failure of the hip implant, but said that any small variation in the biomechanical forces would have been secondary in nature to the hip stem's . . . state" in causing the failure. Id. (internal punctuation omitted).
The defendant moved for exclusion of the expert's testimony and for summary judgment. In response, the plaintiff submitted an affidavit in which the expert testified, for the first time, that the "phase" of the metal in the hip stem violated the defendant's own specifications, and that "environmental factors would be secondary in the cause of the fracture when the material is inherently defective to begin with." Id. (internal punctuation omitted). The defendant moved to strike the affidavit on the grounds that it impermissibly supplemented or changed the expert's opinion after the close of discovery.
Throw a little Daubert on this expert, and his opinions melt away.
The district court held that the expert, while qualified to testify about metallurgy, lacked a scientific or factual basis for his "manufacturing defect" or "causation" testimony. The court further found that the expert had failed to consider the issue of the forces that were exerted on the implant inside the plaintiff's body. Finally, the court granted the defendant's motion to strike the expert's affidavit, noting that statements in the affidavit contradicted the expert's earlier testimony and "a party cannot change testimony," by submitting an affidavit, "just to avoid summary judgment or a Daubert motion." Id. at *2. (This is the "sham affidavit doctrine," which we have used with glee and success in our own appeals.) With the expert's "defect" and "causation" testimony excluded, the plaintiff could not meet her burden of proving those claims, and the court granted summary judgment for the defendant.
On appeal, the Eighth Circuit affirmed all of the district court's holdings. First, it held that the expert's affidavit, invoking, inter alia, manufacturing specifications he earlier testified that he had not been provided, "arguably crossed the line between clarifying prior testimony and changing prior testimony," id. (citation omitted); thus, the district court had not abused its discretion in excluding the affidavit from consideration. The court also rejected the plaintiff's argument that the district court had erred when it required the expert to exclude biomechanical causes of the plaintiff's fracture. The court emphasized that, while "an expert need not rule out all possible causes of an injury, [he] nonetheless should adequately account for obvious alternative explanations." Id. at *3 (internal punctuation and citation omitted). In this case, the expert failed to consider the obvious alternative cause of the plaintiff's fracture; namely "the failure of the hip stem to grow into [the plaintiff's] hip bone and properly distribute her weight," id, and gave no consideration to the biomechanical forces applied to the hip stem. As such, the court concluded, the district court had acted within its discretion in excluding the expert's testimony on causation and defect.
Short, tidy, and correct on all counts. Keep 'em coming. As for us, we are off to see the Wizard (again).
This article is presented for informational purposes only and is not intended to constitute legal advice.
