Articles Posted in Causation

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William Keck III, 48, was playing in a paddle tennis tournament at the Bel-Air Bay Club on a hot and humid day. He entered the club’s locker room, which was not air conditioned, and told an attendant that he had cramps in his leg. The attendant began to massage Keck on a locker room bench and later on the floor. However, Keck’s cramps continued and spread to his other leg and to an arm.

This cramps persisted for several hours. Keck began to turn red despite drinking ice water. The locker room attendants called the club’s athletic director, a manager, and the head of security to check on Keck.

More than four hours after Keck entered the locker room, the athletic director of the club called 911 when Keck began to suffer breathing difficulties and turned blue.

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The Minnesota Supreme Court has reversed a decision of the Court of Appeals in that state. The appeals court affirmed the decision of the district court, which granted judgment as a matter of law to Lycoming Engines. In this case, Mark Kedrowski claimed that a defective fuel pump was manufactured and distributed by Lycoming Engines, which caused the airplane he was piloting to lose power and crash.

Kedrowski was seriously injured. The high court held that the district court abused its discretion by excluding the opinion of Kedrowski’s sole expert witness who testified on causation.

At the jury trial, a verdict was signed by the jury in the amount of $27 million in favor of Kedrowski.  Thereafter, the district court granted Lycoming Engine’s motion for judgment in this matter concluding that the opinion of Kedrowski’s sole causation expert lacked foundational reliability and that, without this opinion, Kedrowski’s claims failed.

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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago addressed the issue of the need for expert testimony on causation when the issue is beyond the understanding of laypersons.

The product liability claim here involved the allegation of a defective intrauterine device (IUD) that broke when it was removed from the plaintiff’s uterus, leaving a fragment of it behind.

Cheryl Dalton sued Teva North America, the manufacturer and distributor of the ParaGard, the IUD.

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