McLaughlin v. Tesla, Inc.

Background

Tesla moved under Federal Rules of Evidence 702 and 703 to exclude testimony from Plaintiffs’ experts Dr. Anthony Andre and Dr. Timothy Fratto. The parties appeared for a hearing on September 5, 2024.

Dr. Andre’s testimony

Tesla challenged two aspects of Dr. Andre’s proposed testimony. First, Tesla sought to prevent him from testifying that Aaron McLaughlin pulled the vehicle’s gear stalk twice, or reasonably believed he had done so, on the day of the accident. McLaughlin testified that he did not remember whether he activated autopilot that day, although he said he used autopilot on most days and activated it by pulling the gear stalk twice.

The court held that Dr. Andre could repeat facts on which he based an opinion, including McLaughlin’s testimony about using autopilot. But Dr. Andre could not infer from that testimony that McLaughlin believed he had engaged autopilot on the accident date or that such a belief was reasonable. The court found those opinions unreliable and granted Tesla’s request to exclude those specific opinions.

Second, Tesla sought to exclude Dr. Andre’s opinions based on internet posts about Tesla drivers’ experiences, as well as the posts themselves. The court found that Dr. Andre adequately supported his methodology for using the posts as an input in his human-factors analysis. It therefore denied Tesla’s request to exclude opinions based on the posts. Dr. Andre could also briefly refer to the posts’ content, including references to “mode confusion” related to Tesla’s autopilot feature, if the posts supported his opinion. The court reserved the admissibility of the internet posts themselves for the upcoming pretrial conference and possible motion in limine.

Dr. Fratto’s testimony

Tesla asked the court to exclude Dr. Fratto’s testimony on several grounds. This order addressed whether his testimony would help the factfinder and whether his methods were unreliable because he did not consider alternative explanations. The court stated that Tesla’s challenge based on Virginia law concerning competency would be addressed separately. The court also understood that Dr. Fratto’s opinion about McLaughlin’s ability to return to work had been withdrawn, if it was ever asserted.

Dr. Fratto offered opinions about whether the October 2020 car accident caused McLaughlin’s cognitive impairment. Tesla argued that Dr. Fratto could not satisfy the requirement that the accident was more likely than not the cause because he could not assign percentages to the accident’s contribution and McLaughlin’s pre-existing conditions.

The court rejected that argument at this stage. It found that both the accident and pre-existing conditions might have contributed, but that Dr. Fratto adequately supported his opinion that the current cognitive impairment resulted from the accident. The court therefore denied Tesla’s request to exclude Dr. Fratto’s testimony as irrelevant. The court emphasized that Plaintiffs still had to persuade the jury that the accident more likely than not caused the impairment.

Tesla also argued that Dr. Fratto’s opinion was unreliable because he did not consider McLaughlin’s self-reported head injuries from jiu-jitsu activities. The court concluded that Dr. Fratto’s opinions satisfied Rule 702. It found that he had addressed other obvious possible causes and did not need to address every possible cause. Because the jiu-jitsu injuries were unsupported by medical records or opinions, the court held that they were not obvious alternative explanations whose omission made Dr. Fratto’s opinion unreliable. The court denied Tesla’s request to exclude his testimony on that ground.

Disposition

The court granted in part and denied in part Tesla’s request to exclude Dr. Andre’s testimony. It denied Tesla’s request to exclude Dr. Fratto’s testimony. It reserved the separate question of whether the internet posts themselves may be admitted for the pretrial conference.