Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation
- Thomas Hixson
- 3:15-cv-02726
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Judge Hixson denied Amanda Jones’s request to seek reconsideration of an order excluding her expert’s opinion.
Amanda Jones and the defendants, including National Railroad Passenger Corporation; the ruling also concerned whether Jones could seek reconsideration of the exclusion of John McKinney’s expert opinion.
What happened
Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation concerns Amanda Jones’s negligence allegations after she and her scooter fell during transit on an AMTRAK Highway 17 Express bus. The court had earlier excluded the opinion of Jones’s expert, John McKinney, after finding that she had not shown his methods were reliable.
Jones asked for permission to file a motion asking the court to reconsider that exclusion. She argued that the defendants had not raised unreliability in their earlier motion and that McKinney had testified as an expert in other cases. The court concluded that the other case involved different facts, plaintiffs, and defendants, and did not establish that McKinney’s opinion was reliable in this case.
Judge Thomas S. Hixson denied Jones’s motion for leave to file a motion for reconsideration. The ruling addressed only whether Jones could seek reconsideration of the expert-evidence decision.
The detailed version
- Jones v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation · No. 3:15-cv-02726
- Thomas Hixson
- Sept. 13, 2022
Background
This case arises from allegations that the defendants were negligent when Amanda Jones and her scooter fell during transit on an AMTRAK Highway 17 Express Bus. At a July 21, 2022 pretrial conference, the court granted the defendants’ motion to exclude the opinion of John McKinney. The court found that Jones had not shown that McKinney’s expert opinion was reliable. The case was later stayed at Jones’s request, without opposition from the defendants.
On September 1, 2022, Jones moved for leave to file a motion for reconsideration of the expert-exclusion order. A motion for leave is a request for permission to file another motion. Under the court’s local rules, permission to seek reconsideration may be based on a previously unknown material difference in fact or law, new material facts or a change in law, or the court’s manifest failure to consider material facts or dispositive legal arguments. The court also explained that reconsideration is generally disfavored and ordinarily requires newly discovered evidence, clear error, or an intervening change in controlling law.
Arguments and analysis
Jones argued that the defendants had not raised unreliability in their motion to exclude McKinney’s opinion and that McKinney had testified as an expert in prior cases. The defendants’ earlier motion, however, had challenged McKinney’s opinion under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 and had argued that the opinion was unreliable.
The court stated that, before deciding whether expert methods are reliable, it must ensure that the methods are adequately explained. After reviewing the record, the court found that Jones still had not adequately explained McKinney’s methods in this case. Jones relied on McKinney’s deposition from a 2017 case in Tennessee, but that case involved different facts, plaintiffs, and defendants. The court therefore found that Jones had not met her burden of establishing the reliability of McKinney’s opinion as applied to this case.
Disposition
Judge Thomas S. Hixson DENIED Plaintiff’s Motion for Leave to File Motion for Reconsideration. The opinion does not state that the motion was denied with or without prejudice. The ruling concerned permission to seek reconsideration of the order excluding McKinney’s expert opinion; it did not state a final judgment on the negligence allegations.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.