Mechanical Engineering Expert Not Allowed to Opine on the Design of the Vacuum

Plaintiff Jennifer Ingoglia alleged that she was injured when she fell while vacuuming the carpet in her home using a vacuum designed by SharkNinja Operating LLC ("Shark") and sold to her by Kohl's Inc. ("Kohl's") (collectively, "Defendants"). Jennifer asserted claims for negligence, strict products liability, and breach of the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose, relying on theories of both defective design and failure to warn. Her husband, Louis Ingoglia (with Jennifer, "Plaintiffs"), alleged loss of consortium stemming from Jennifer's injuries.

Defendants sought to exclude the testimony of Plaintiffs' sole expert, Dr. Donald Coates.

Mechanical Engineering Expert Witness

Dr. Donald A. Coates earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Purdue University's West Lafayette campus. Coates has spent 30-plus years conducting and directing innovation in the appliance industry. He also received the Outstanding Mechanical Engineer Award in 1991.

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Discussion by the Court

Coates opined that the design of the vacuum at issue was defective in three ways: (1) it lacked a suction reduction valve; (2) it lacked a height adjustment to reduce drag; and (3) it was top-heavy. Coates further opined that the vacuum should have warned users that the product should not have been used on thick carpets like those in Plaintiffs' home.

There are numerous problems with Coates' opinions. Most significantly, Coates did not test the vacuum on Plaintiffs' actual wall-to-wall carpeting before preparing his reports. Nor did Coates' opinions have quantitative or objective support. He conceded that ergonomic data concerning the amount of work required to operate the vacuum is numerical, but his reports contain no such analysis. And when asked how anyone could verify or peer review his observational findings without numbers, he answered only that others could do so "by observing the same thing."

These deficiencies are especially significant because the subjects on which Coates opines—suction, airflow, drag, ergonomic force, and the effect of the vacuum's interaction with particular carpeting—are themselves measurable.

Coates' opinions rest on two premises: that the vacuum seals itself to carpet like Plaintiffs', and that the resulting forces are excessive. He never tested the first on Plaintiffs' carpet or on carpet shown to be comparable, and he never measured the second. These are not gaps in an otherwise sound analysis; they are the analysis. What remains is opinion "connected to existing data only by the ipse dixit of the expert," which no Court is required to admit. Nor did Coates apply the rigor of his own field. A former director of research at Hoover, he acknowledged that airflow and suction are measured with instruments and that Hoover's standards for judging whether a vacuum's drag was excessive were, "in most cases," numerical.

The same deficiencies require exclusion of Coates' opinion that the vacuum should have carried a warning against use on thick carpet. That opinion depends on the premise that the vacuum seizes on carpet like Plaintiffs', and Coates tested that premise only on carpeting and bathmats from his own home—a simulation he conceded was "not complete," and would have been better performed on Plaintiffs' actual carpet. An opinion about what a warning should have said is no more reliable than the untested premise on which it rests.

Held

The Court granted the Defendants' motion to exclude the testimony of Dr. Donald Coates.

Key Takeaway

Without testing under conditions reasonably comparable to those of the accident, numerical measurements of the forces he characterizes as excessive, or an objective standard against which those measurements could be evaluated, the Court lacks a reliable basis for determining whether Coates' conclusions are "based on sufficient facts or data" or are "the product of reliable principles and methods."

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