Unreliable Methodologies Doom Neck Brace Experts

The rulings are lengthy (respectively, 24 and 14 LEXIS pages) and detailed, but the reader should not bail out on reviewing them. There are valuable lessons to be learned. If you are a plaintiffs' advocate, you will want to avoid the shortcomings in reliability that plagued the experts. If you are a defense litigator, you will want to learn about potential vulnerabilities in your own adverse experts' reports and methodologies. You can also learn about the relative harmony that should exist between the expert's report, proffered under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(a)(2) (B), and that expert's subsequent deposition testimony. And you will want to learn about the significance of an expert's failure to account for “obvious alternative explanations” to the theory or opinion he or she espouses.

The facts, in a nutshell, are as follows. Plaintiff Brock Lyons was riding his 2013 Honda dirt bike on a track called Wildcat Creek MX. He was practicing for a national amateur competition. He was familiar with the track's layout, having ridden it nearly 100 times in the preceding 10 years. He was wearing motor-cross garb, boots, gloves and goggles, and a full-face helmet. He also wore a 2007 “Leatt Brace” — a neck brace that he had worn for seven years. He had never “had a wreck” with this brace.