King v. Pierce Manufacturing, Inc.

Not for publication in West's Federal Reporter
United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 14-2036
JOSEPH T. KING, Administrator for the Estate of Gertrude King,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
PIERCE MANUFACTURING, INC.,
Defendant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Richard G. Stearns, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Barron, Selya, and Stahl,
Circuit Judges.
David E. Cunningham, with whom Burke & Foskett, LLC was on
brief, for appellant.
Anthony J. Colucci, III, with whom Marybeth Priore and Colucci
& Gallaher, P.C. were on brief, for appellee.
May 4, 2015
STAHL, Circuit Judge. Plaintiff-Appellant Joseph T.
King, as the administrator for the Estate of Gertrude King, appeals
from an order granting summary judgment to Defendant-Appellee
Pierce Manufacturing, Inc. ("Pierce") on claims that the allegedly
defective fire truck it manufactured was responsible for the
decedent's death.
Gertrude King ("Gertrude") was standing on the median of
a Cambridge, Massachusetts road in January, 2010, when the nozzle
of a loose hose on a passing fire truck forcefully struck her. She
was rushed to the hospital and underwent emergency surgery, but
died two days later as a result of her injuries.
The hose that hit Gertrude belonged to a Cambridge Fire
Department ("CFD") truck manufactured by Pierce. Pierce builds
custom trucks for fire departments throughout the United States.
Each apparatus is built according to the specifications of the
particular fire department, which may choose from the hundreds of
thousands of features that Pierce offers, or request special
components. Consequently, it is up to the individual fire
department to design its trucks, including the hose storage area —
its length and width, the specifications of the hose bed covers and
hose capacity, and the materials used.
Pierce manufactured the fire truck at issue in 2002. In
conformance with the CFD's specifications, the truck was built with
two "crosslay" hose beds — used for storing the 200-foot hose — one
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with 1.5-inch outlets and one with a 2.5-inch outlet. Crosslay
covers were installed over each hose bed for the purpose of
securing the hose and protecting it from the weather. Because the
CFD's specifications did not call for it, Pierce did not install a
supplemental hose restraint in addition to the crosslay cover,
although such a feature was available.1
Joseph T. King ("King"), nephew of Gertrude and
administrator of her estate, filed suit against Pierce in
Massachusetts state court; Pierce removed to federal district
court. King's complaint alleged breach of warranty, negligent
design, and wrongful death. Pierce thereafter retained an expert,
Dr. Dennis Guenther, a professor of mechanical engineering at The
Ohio State University and a project engineer at a forensic
engineering firm. After performing an accident and design analysis
of the fire truck in question, Dr. Guenther prepared a report
concluding that the truck was not defective or unreasonably
dangerous. He opined that the truck was "of good overall design"
and that there was no evidence that Pierce had engaged in wanton
conduct or had disregarded public safety. Rather, according to Dr.
1
At the time of the manufacture of the fire truck in question
in 2002, per National Fire Protection Association Standard 1901,
fire trucks were not required to be equipped with redundant hose
restraints. However, in 2005 — after the truck's manufacture but
prior to the accident at issue — Standard 1901 was amended to
require that all fire trucks manufactured after November 15, 2005
be equipped with hose restraints.
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Guenther, the improper stowing of the hose in the hose beds had
caused the accident.
Because King failed to disclose any experts by the
district court's deadline, Pierce moved to preclude King from
offering any expert testimony at trial. After the district court
granted the motion, Pierce followed up with a motion for summary
judgment. Pierce argued, inter alia, that it was entitled to
judgment on King's negligent design and breach of warranty claims,
which could not be proven in the absence of expert testimony. The
district court agreed and entered summary judgment for Pierce,
ruling that expert testimony was necessary to King's case and that
without it the jury would not be able to rely on common knowledge
to determine the cause of the accident.2
On appeal, King challenges the district court's
determination that his claims required presentation of expert
testimony. He argues that jurors could find, based on lay
knowledge, that the absence of hose restraints in a fire truck
constituted a design defect that exposed pedestrians to an
unreasonable risk of injury.
In a diversity action such as this one, "whether expert
testimony is required is a matter of state law." Beaudette v.
2
The district court further held that King's "argument also
founder[ed] on the issues of foreseeability and intervening cause,"
King v. Pierce Mfg., Inc., No. 13-10150-RGS, 2014 WL 4351599, at *4
(D. Mass. Sept. 2, 2014), matters that we need not address in this
opinion, as we rule solely on the basis of expert testimony.
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Louisville Ladder, Inc., 462 F.3d 22, 27 (1st Cir. 2006). Under
Massachusetts law, both negligent design and breach of warranty
claims require proof of a design defect or an unreasonably
dangerous condition that existed when the product left the
defendant's control. See Enrich v. Windmere Corp., 416 Mass. 83,
87–89 (1993). The presence of a defect, in turn, typically "cannot
be inferred in the absence of expert testimony." Id. at 87. Such
testimony is required in complex product liability cases in order
to mitigate against jury "conjecture and surmise" regarding the
cause of the injuries at issue and the relevant standard of care.
Triangle Dress, Inc. v. Bay State Serv., Inc., 356 Mass. 440, 441
(1969); see also Hochen v. Bobst Grp., Inc., 290 F.3d 446, 451 (1st
Cir. 2002) (applying Massachusetts law).
This case falls squarely within the ambit of the expert-
testimony rule. While a fire truck is certainly a common sight on
city streets, lay knowledge does not extend to the design of the
vehicle's hose bed and the relative propriety of different types of
hose restraints. As the Massachusetts Appeals Court has observed
in relation to an escalator, "[b]y its nature, [a fire truck] is a
complex, technical piece of machinery, whose design and operational
requirements are not straightforward. Accordingly, any
determination of the dimensions essential to its safe operation is
generally beyond the scope of an average person's knowledge."
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Esturban v. Mass. Bay Transp. Auth., 68 Mass. App. Ct. 911, 911–12
(2007) (collecting cases).
Unlike in cases involving defects so obvious as to not
require expert testimony, jurors here cannot be expected to intuit
that a hose stored in a bed equipped with crosslay covers but not
redundant hose restraints would be likely to come loose in a manner
that threatens pedestrian safety. "Without the aid of an expert
in the field, jurors would also be left to speculate about whether
alternatively engineered designs might have prevented the
accident." Id. at 912. Contra Smith v. Ariens Co., 375 Mass. 620,
625 (1978) ("It is within the knowledge of a jury whether
unshielded metal protrusion on the handle bar of a snowmobile
constitute a defect in design which creates an unreasonable risk of
harm."); Hayes v. Hobart Corp., 7 Mass. App. Ct. 889, 889 (1979)
("It was open to the jury to find on their own examination of the
food chopper and photographs thereof that the defendant had been
negligent in designing a machine which readily permitted the user's
fingers to reach the cutting blades."). Furthermore, where the
manufacturer offered various hose-restraint options but the fire
department chose not to order them, an average juror would not know
who bore responsibility for ensuring that trucks were equipped with
adequate restraints.
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Given King's obligation to provide expert testimony to
support his claim and his failure to offer any before the deadline,
we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
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