In Re Pacific Fertility Center Litigation

Background

Plaintiffs brought product-liability and failure-to-recall claims against Chart Industries after a March 2018 incident involving a Chart-manufactured cryopreservation tank. The tank, known as Tank 4, was storing plaintiffs’ eggs and embryos when it lost liquid nitrogen. Plaintiffs alleged that a defective weld allowed liquid nitrogen to enter the tank’s vacuum-insulation layer, causing pressure and an implosion. They also alleged that a malfunctioning electronic controller should have warned Pacific Fertility Center staff so the contents could be moved, and that Chart negligently failed to recall or retrofit the controller.

Chart argued that Pacific Fertility Center’s conduct caused the incident, including unplugging the controller and manually monitoring the tank’s liquid-nitrogen level. More than 130 related individual actions had been consolidated with the claims in this case. Plaintiffs moved under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and the Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert to exclude portions of testimony from five Chart experts: Eldon Leaphart, John Cauthen, Dr. Grace Centola, Dr. Franklin Miller, and Dr. Angela Lawson.

Legal standard

Rule 702 permits expert testimony when the expert’s specialized knowledge will help the jury, the testimony is based on sufficient facts or data, the methods are reliable, and the expert reliably applied those methods. The court focused on whether the opinions were reliable and relevant. The court’s role was to examine the experts’ reasoning and methods, not decide whether their ultimate conclusions were persuasive.

Rulings on the experts

Eldon Leaphart

The court allowed Leaphart, an electrical engineer, to testify about the TEC 3000 controller, how it worked, and what its operating manual stated. But he could not testify about what the controller’s information meant concerning an impending problem with Tank 4 or whether its outputs placed Pacific Fertility Center on notice of such a problem. He also could not testify that the controller’s condition did not cause the loss of tissue or plaintiffs’ damages. Plaintiffs’ motion regarding Leaphart was granted in part and denied in part.

Dr. Angela Lawson

Chart clarified that it did not intend to have Lawson testify that plaintiffs were malingering. Because neither Lawson nor plaintiffs’ expert Dr. Grill determined whether any plaintiff was malingering, neither expert could give an opinion on that subject.

John Cauthen

The court denied plaintiffs’ motion regarding Cauthen. Cauthen could testify about data recovered from the tank’s controller and changes found in the Reflections database. His examination found that, two weeks after the incident, a Pacific Fertility Center employee changed four entries, including adding liquid-nitrogen fill data for February 15 and February 28. The court found that this evidence was relevant to Chart’s argument that Pacific Fertility Center failed to monitor the tank reliably and that the changes could affect the jury’s assessment of the facility’s credibility. Plaintiffs could present evidence supporting their explanation for why the entries were changed.

Dr. Grace Centola

The court allowed Centola to testify about whether retroactively entering liquid-nitrogen measurements and comments violated the applicable standard of care, why those actions violated that standard, and whether the data indicated a liquid-nitrogen supply problem that should have been investigated. She could describe the facts, including backdating and the absence of paper logs, and explain whether and why those actions departed from the standard of care.

Centola could not characterize Pacific Fertility Center as having a pattern of untruthful statements or a dishonest practice, and she could not opine that an individual was dishonest. The court excluded her opinions about low liquid-nitrogen readings from 2013 and 2014. Her opinions about employees’ occasional use of buckets to refill tanks were also excluded unless and until Pacific Fertility Center witnesses testified that they did or might have used buckets to fill Tank 4 on the dates at issue. Plaintiffs’ motion regarding Centola was granted in part and denied in part.

Dr. Franklin Miller

The court granted, denied, and deferred parts of plaintiffs’ motion regarding Miller’s opinions. Miller could testify about what Chart and other entities did to Tank 4 after the incident and why he believed a leak could not be found. He could not testify or imply that Pacific Fertility Center or another party acted improperly by spraying the tank with powder or conducting other testing.

The court excluded Miller’s opinion that Tank 4 was out of warranty because Chart had not shown that the warranty status was relevant and the evidence could confuse the jury. Miller could not testify to the legal conclusion that Tank 4 did or did not have a design or manufacturing defect. He could testify about whether, in his opinion, the tank was designed and manufactured properly.

Miller could not testify about how an experienced welder would interpret Chart’s design drawings unless Chart first established that he had the required expertise. The court also excluded the results of Miller’s vacuum-failure test because the test did not sufficiently reproduce the conditions of the incident: the test tank was empty, it did not simulate the interior weld crack plaintiffs proposed, and it was conducted only once, preventing calculation of averages or error rates. The court also excluded Miller’s testimony about the 2013 and 2014 low liquid-nitrogen readings for the same reason that it excluded Centola’s related testimony.

The court rejected plaintiffs’ argument that Miller’s second rebuttal report was untimely, but struck the report’s new opinions except for Miller’s response to Dr. Kasbekar’s finite-element analysis. The court held that a rule allowing correction of incomplete or incorrect information did not permit Chart to file additional opinions merely to strengthen its earlier report or have the last word.

Disposition

The court concluded that plaintiffs’ motion to exclude portions of the testimony of the five Chart experts was granted in part and denied in part. The order disposed of Docket No. 632. It addressed expert-evidence issues rather than the merits of the product-liability and failure-to-recall claims.