10th Circuit Holds Opinions Of Expert, Craig Good, Are Bad And Reverses Multimillion Verdict

In Hoffman v. Ford Motor Company,1 the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the opinions of expert, Craig Good, were inadmissible because they were not grounded in fact or science. The court reversed and remanded the verdict for entry of a judgment in favor of Ford.

In that case, plaintiff, Erica Hoffman, was rendered quadriplegic after she was ejected from the front passenger seat of a 1999 Ford Mercury Cougar Coupe in a rollover accident. Plaintiffs alleged this catastrophic injury was the result of an alleged defect in the seatbelt – the seatbelt allegedly unlatched during the accident. The claims against Ford alleged negligence and strict liability. Good, a mechanical engineer, was retained by the plaintiffs to offer opinions on whether: (1) Erica Hoffman was wearing her seatbelt at the start of the rollover accident; (2) the seatbelt functioned properly and as expected during the rollover; and (3) safer alternative seatbelt buckle designs were available at the time the vehicle was manufactured, which would have prevented or reduced her injuries. Good has appeared in a variety of product liability cases, including personal watercraft and other recreational vehicles.

As for the first question, based on a physical evaluation of the seatbelt in question, Good concluded plaintiff was wearing her seatbelt at the onset of the rollover. Having reached that conclusion, Good then opined the seatbelt must have malfunctioned for the plaintiff to be ejected from the vehicle and claimed the seatbelt was released due to inertial unlatch. He based this opinion by calculating the amount of vertical gravitational force necessary for this phenomenon to occur. To render this calculation, he subjected eighteen seatbelt buckles, similar in design to the plaintiff's seatbelt, to a series of acceleration tests conducted in a laboratory. He did not, however, include the plaintiff's seatbelt in his acceleration tests. He also limited his testing to the seatbelt hardware and did not include any other component (the webbing or steel stalk) in the testing. According to Good, his tests established that inertial unlatch thresholds decreased as the angle increased.

In his expert report, Good recognized the importance of comparing rollover crash test data to ascertain whether the results could be duplicated "in the real world."2 Notably, he claimed there was insufficient real world rollover crash test data to make this comparison. So, he compared his results to...

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