On December 9, 2022, the NAM filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court of Wisconsin to review and reverse a trial court’s failure to exercise its gatekeeping duty to exclude unreliable expert testimony. In this case, Vanderventer, et al. v. Hyundai Motor America, et al., the plaintiffs allege that the defective design of a driver seat caused one of the plaintiffs to experience enhanced injuries from a car accident. Over the defendant’s objection, the trial court admitted the testimony of plaintiffs’ expert witnesses and the jury returned a verdict of $38 million in the plaintiffs’ favor.
Our coalition brief argues that the Supreme Court of Wisconsin should grant the petition to clarify Wisconsin trial courts’ gatekeeping obligation to ensure that expert testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods prior to admission into evidence. The trial court failed in this regard by allowing (1) plaintiffs’ expert witnesses—a biomechanical engineer and a medical doctor—“to extend their [causation] testimony beyond their specific fields of expertise”; and (2) the plaintiff’s biomechanical engineer to give design defect testimony without his ever testing the actual car seat at issue under conditions similar to those that occurred during the accident. All manufacturers have an interest in ensuring that trial courts closely scrutinize the factual foundation of expert testimony, as that testimony tends to have an outsized influence on juries.
Unfortunately, on February 21, 2023, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin denied the petition for review.