Products Liability Law Reporter

A federal district court held that the testimony of a plaintiff’s engineering expert was admissible under the Daubert standard in a case brought by a passenger of a 2013 BMW 328i who was ejected during a rollover collision.

Oliviah Constable was ejected from the passenger seat of a BMW whose door opened during a rollover collision. She sued Bayerische Motoren Werke AG and BMW of North America, LLC, which designed, manufactured, and distributed the vehicle, which contains a crash unlock system that unlocks the doors when the front air bags deploy. The plaintiff brought claims for negligence and strict liability against the defendants, which moved for summary judgment and to exclude the testimony of one of the plaintiff’s experts, engineer Andrew Gilberg. The defense argued that Gilberg’s opinions failed to meet Daubert’s reliability and relevancy requirements and that the crash unlock design was reasonable as a matter of law.

Denying the motion to exclude, the court rejected the defense argument that the Federal Rules of Evidence require exclusion of an expert’s alternative design opinion unless the expert has personally prepared such designs for the product or device at issue. Gilberg’s opinions are reliable and relevant to the plaintiff’s defect claims, the court said, pointing to evidence that the defendants had previously considered a crash unlock system with a different delayed unlock feature. Moreover, the court said, Gilberg has two mechanical engineering degrees and almost 50 years of experience in motor vehicle safety and crash analysis—issues directly related to the plaintiff’s claims.

Consequently, the court concluded that Gilberg’s testimony was admissible and that genuine issues of material fact remained on whether the crash unlock system design was defective and led to the plaintiff’s injuries.

Citation: Constable v. Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, 2023 WL 4827088 (N.D. Ga. July 27, 2023).