Products liability – Expert – Ceiling fan

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Where a plaintiff Insurance Company has brought a subrogation action following a fire that allegedly started in a bathroom ceiling fan manufactured and sold by the defendant, summary judgment should be awarded to the defendant because the opinion of the plaintiff’s expert is not based on valid cognitive testing, nor is it undergirded by any specific, generally accepted scientific principles.

“Liberty Mutual Insurance Company (‘Liberty’) has brought a subrogation action against Broan-NuTone LLC (‘Broan’) to recover damages from a fire that allegedly started in a bathroom ceiling fan manufactured and sold by Broan. The fire occurred in a home owned and occupied by Marc Rysman and his family and insured by Liberty. Liberty asserts claims for: (1) negligence; (2) breach of implied warranty of merchantability; (3) breach of implied warranty of fitness for a particular purpose; and (4) violation of Massachusetts General Laws chapter 93A (‘Chapter 93A’). … In support of its claims, Liberty retained an expert to investigate and form an opinion on the origin and cause of the fire. Broan moves to exclude the expert’s opinion and moves also for summary judgment on all four claims; Liberty opposes both motions. … For the reasons explained below, the court grants Broan’s motions. …

“Both parties hired experts to investigate the origin and cause of the fire. Liberty retained Jeremiah Pratt (‘Pratt’), a certified fire investigator and licensed professional engineer with twenty-five years of firefighting experience. …

“Broan combines much of its summary judgment argument with the separate but conceptually related argument that the court should exclude a portion of Pratt’s expert opinion as unreliable. Expert testimony may be admissible if ‘scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue’ and if the proposed witness is qualified as an expert by some specialized ‘knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education.’ Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharms., Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 588 (1993) (quoting Fed.R.Evid. 702). …

“Here, Broan’s motion for summary judgment is so closely intertwined with its motion to exclude Pratt’s expert testimony that the court cannot rule on the former without essentially ruling on the latter. …

“Broan’s objection to Pratt’s testimony is a relatively narrow one that attacks Pratt’s opinion as to what caused the fire. …

“Zeroing in on their objection, Broan asserts that Pratt’s opinion that the fan’s vibration caused its internal wiring insulation to abrade, which then led to the fire, is scientifically unsupported and unreliable, and thus inadmissible under Rule 702. Specifically, Broan identifies three alleged deficiencies in Pratt’s opinion: (1) Pratt had no evidence of unusual vibrations; (2) Pratt had no scientific basis for his assumption that the appliance wire insulation could be abraded away or how that might happen; and (3) Pratt has no scientific basis for concluding that arcing on the steel scroll in the connection junction box caused the fire rather than arcing on nearby branch wiring. Of these, Broan’s second argument ultimately prevails. …

“In sum, Pratt’s conclusion that the fan’s vibration led to an abrasion of internal wiring insulation is not based on valid cognitive testing, nor is it undergirded by any specific, generally accepted scientific principles. … The only connection between Pratt’s theory and the evidence of electrical activity is his ipse dixit, which means ‘there is simply too great an analytical gap between the data and the opinion proffered’ for the opinion to be admissible. General Elec. Co. v. Joiner, 522 U.S. 136, 146 (1997). Therefore, the court will exclude Pratt’s opinion that the fan’s vibration caused an internal wire and the metal divider to rub together, which in turn abraded the wire’s insulation and caused an arcing event and the fire. …

“Liberty’s only evidence of a defect in the subject fan is Pratt’s opinion that the vibration of the internal wiring or the metal divider caused abrasion of the wire’s insulation, and, ultimately, the fire, combined with his related opinions on how Broan could have designed the fan to avoid this abrasion. As discussed above, Pratt’s conclusion on the wire abrasion is inadmissible. Without this testimony, there is no other evidence that the configuration of the wires, the insulation, or any other component of the fan’s design was defective. Evidence that the fire started in the fan’s connection junction box, without evidence explaining how the fire started, is insufficient to prove a design defect. … Therefore, Liberty cannot succeed on a design defect theory. …

“Here, Liberty has adduced no evidence that the fan in the Rysmans’ second-floor bathroom deviated in any way from any other fan in the same product line, and there is no indication that the one alleged defect Pratt identified, namely, the free-hanging wire in the connection junction box, was unique to this one fan. At most, Liberty offhandedly remarks in its opposition to Broan’s Daubert motion that the steel divider in the connection junction box clearly was not smooth based on photographs taken after the fire. … Even so, there is no evidence that the divider was not smooth prior to the fire or that it otherwise deviated from the dividers in other identical fans. … Accordingly, Liberty cannot meet its burden to show a manufacturing defect in the fan.

“Based on the admissible evidence in the record, the court finds that Liberty cannot demonstrate that Broan designed or manufactured the subject fan defectively. Broan is therefore entitled to summary judgment on the breach of implied warranty of merchantability claim.”

Liberty Mutual Insurance Company v. Broan-NuTone LLC (Lawyers Weekly No. 02-226-24) (27 pages) (Cabell, U.S.M.J.) (Docket No. 21-cv-11986-DLC) (April 26, 2024).

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