Engineering Expert Was Not Allowed to Opine on the Condition of the Wooden Panel
Posted on January 6, 2026 by Expert Witness Profiler
This is a personal injury case. Plaintiff Amy Manzanares was allegedly injured by a wooden panel in Defendant El Monte Rents, Inc.’s recreational vehicle (“RV”) in November 2023.
Defendant filed a motion to exclude Plaintiffs’ expert, Mark Goodson, P.E.
Engineering Expert Witness
Mark E. Goodson, P.E. is a consulting engineer licensed in electrical and mechanical engineering. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University. He studied forensics at UT Southwestern for three years and has formal training in fire investigation and fire protection. Goodson has several publications in the field of forensic science. In 1984, he opened his consulting practice.
Discussion by the Court
Plaintiffs included Goodson in their expert disclosures. His expert designation lists three general areas of testimony. First, Plaintiffs sought to have Goodson testify about the “appearance of the lumber that was in place in the RV . . . at the time the accident occurred and whether or not the lumber was original to the RV or changed out from what was originally in the RV.” Second, Plaintiffs sought to offer testimony about “inspections [Goodson] performed on the actual RV involved in the accident and similar modeled RV inspected and the appearance and status of their paneling.” Third, Goodson’s designation provided that he will testify about the quality of the repairs performed on Defendant’s RV and whether the repairs were appropriate and safe. That includes repairs “that were in place in the most recent inspection in 2025”—after the accident occurred.
Defendant did not question Goodson’s qualifications but challenged his testimony on other grounds. In Defendant’s view, Goodson’s testimony is irrelevant, unreliable, and unhelpful to the jury.
Defendant argued that, despite the list of topics in Plaintiffs’ expert designations, Goodson only has one conclusion: that the wooden panel was not installed or attached properly. That conclusion, according to Defendant, is based solely on the fact that the wooden panel fell.
Analysis
Plaintiffs did not identify a methodology for the Court to evaluate
Plaintiffs contended that Goodson’s opinions are based on his inspection of the RV, photographs, and his expertise in failure analysis. But Goodson testified that he did not employ a failure analysis, and Plaintiffs did not identify any expert materials showing otherwise.
The sufficiency of the materials Goodson relied on is a different question from reliability, so the inspection and photographs did not address the question at hand.
The only evidence Plaintiffs cited in their entire response is the following deposition excerpt:
Q. Do you have — well, I’ll circle back to that here in a second. You are not offering any opinions about the condition of the fascia board immediately before the incident occurred, correct?
A. Well, except for the fact that it was improperly attached; that is correct.
Plaintiffs used this excerpt to argue that Defendant incorrectly states that Goodson offers no opinion about the status of the wooden panel prior to the accident. But the Court is not so concerned with whether Goodson testified that the panel was improperly attached. Rather, the Court is concerned that it lacks the information required to perform its gatekeeping function under Rule 702(c) to evaluate the reliability of the method underlying this opinion.
The quoted excerpt alone does not assist the Court in performing this function, and Plaintiffs did not attach or cite any other evidence. Goodson himself answered “No” when asked if he used any “technique or underlying theory that [he] relied upon in arriving at [his] opinions.” While the Court did not give conclusive weight to that answer because it does not have the entire deposition transcript and it is up to the Court to determine if a reliable method exists, it was Plaintiffs burden to otherwise demonstrate his “testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods.”
Plaintiffs did not demonstrate that any potential method is reliable by a preponderance of the evidence
The Findings section of Goodson’s report begins by explaining that the “actual piece of lumber has not been examined,” but that a photograph was examined. The wooden panel that struck Amy Manzanares was apparently attached to the lumber depicted in the photograph.
Below the photograph, Goodson explained that the lumber appeared to have been ripped as opposed to cut with a cross cut technique. When Goodson was asked about this portion of the paragraph during his deposition, his testimony left the Court unable to analyze reliability. Defense counsel stated that she wanted “to understand the significance of the findings here regarding the lumber being ripped versus crosscut.” Goodson responded that “There’s no significance in this case.”
In the next sentence under the Findings section, Goodson stated that “the lumber appears to be actual lumber, as opposed to an engineered wood product (such as MDF, Medium Density Fiberboard).” According to Goodson’s report, these “observations have more to do with fit and finish of the product; the lumber does not appear to aesthetically match what was found to be used in other similarly outfitted vehicles.”
Neither the report or the deposition excerpts provided by both parties explain how these observations about the type of wood at issue inform Goodson’s opinions. Given no other materials, the Court cannot conclude that it is more likely than not this potential method is reliable.
Next, Goodson’s report provided close-up photographs of the lumber to which the wooden panel that injured Amy Manzanares was attached. According to him, there is “no apparent evidence of any type of adhesive having been used.”
While the analysis of the lack of evidence of an adhesive and screw type could be a method, the Court cannot conclude it is reliable under the circumstances.
Potential spoliation of evidence does not bear on the Rule 702 analysis
It may well be that it was not possible for Goodson to have a reliable method in a case where the wooden panel at issue was repaired before he could ever inspect it. The facts may ultimately show that Defendant spoliated evidence by repairing the panel after a duty to preserve arose. That is not the question before the Court here. Admission of expert testimony as a spoliation sanction is a “wholly inappropriate” remedy. Such a remedy would have this Court “flatly ignore its responsibilities” as a gatekeeper of inadmissible expert testimony under the Federal Rules of Evidence. As a result, the Court cannot rely on what method Goodson might have been able to employ without the alleged spoliation as a basis to admit his testimony.
Held
The Court granted the Defendant’s motion to exclude the testimony of Plaintiffs’ expert Mark Goodson, P.E.
Key Takeaway
The Court is unconvinced that Plaintiffs carried their burden to show it is more likely than not that Goodson’s opinions are the product of reliable principles and methods. The Court reached this conclusion for three main reasons. First, the evidence did not identify a methodology for the Court to evaluate. Second, even if Plaintiffs identified a methodology, the evidence did not show its reliability by a preponderance of the evidence. Third, whether Defendant spoliated evidence has no bearing on the admissibility of Goodson’s testimony.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Manzanares V. El Monte Rents, Inc. |
| Docket Number: | 4:24cv191 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Sherman Division |
| Order Date: | January 05, 2026 |
