Bocoum v. Daimler Trucks North America LLC

Background

The court had previously decided the defendants’ summary-judgment motion and the parties’ requests to exclude opposing expert testimony under Federal Rule of Evidence 702. In that earlier ruling, the court granted in part and denied in part Plaintiff Oumarou Bocoum’s request to exclude testimony from the defendants’ expert, engineer Timothy Cheek. The court allowed Cheek to offer four opinions about Bocoum’s September 4, 2015 car accident but excluded Cheek’s fifth opinion, which concerned the sufficiency and reasonableness of the defendants’ service manuals and the need for periodic inspection of internal steering-gear components.

The court had excluded Opinion 5 because the defendants had not shown that Cheek was qualified to testify about service manuals and had not shown that he used a reliable method to reach that opinion. In the earlier briefing, Bocoum challenged Cheek’s opinions, including Opinion 5, while the defendants did not address Opinion 5 in their opposition.

Defendants’ Motion

The defendants sought reconsideration under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b) and asked the court to excuse the motion’s delay as “excusable neglect.” They argued that neither Cheek nor the defendants had immediately understood the relationship between the court’s ruling and Bocoum’s brief discussion of the warnings-related opinion. They also argued that they delayed because the parties were attempting mediation and did not want to spend time on an issue that might become moot.

Under Local Civil Rule 6.3, a motion for reconsideration generally must be served within fourteen days after the court’s decision on the original motion. The court explained that reconsideration is an extraordinary remedy and generally requires the movant to identify an intervening change in controlling law, new evidence, or a need to correct clear error or prevent manifest injustice. It may not be used to relitigate an old issue or present evidence and arguments that could have been offered earlier.

Court’s Analysis

The court held that the motion was untimely. The defendants sought leave to file it 108 days after the earlier decision, rather than within the fourteen-day period. The court found that the defendants’ explanations did not establish excusable neglect. The earlier opinion clearly identified and separately analyzed Opinion 5, and the defendants did not ask for an extension of the reconsideration deadline when they informed the court about mediation or sought extensions for other pretrial filings.

The court also held that reconsideration would fail even if the motion were timely. The defendants acknowledged that the court had not overlooked factual material. The court concluded that the defendants had not shown that it overlooked controlling authority or evidence. Instead, they sought to supply arguments and supporting material that they had chosen not to submit when responding to Bocoum’s request to exclude Cheek’s testimony. The court stated that the defendants could not obtain a “second bite at the apple.”

Disposition

Judge John P. Cronan denied the defendants’ motion for reconsideration. The court directed the Clerk of Court to close Docket Number 129. The earlier exclusion of Cheek’s Opinion 5 therefore remained in place, while the earlier ruling allowing Cheek’s first four opinions was not changed by this order.

The opinion contains an internal date inconsistency: one passage says that the defendants sought leave on July 14, 2021, while the surrounding chronology and the stated 108-day calculation indicate July 14, 2022.