Texas Supreme Court Reverses Award Against Whirlpool, Reaffirms Expert Reliability Standards
The Texas Supreme Court released its opinion today in the Whirlpool v. Camacho case. Joab Camacho, a minor, burned to death in a trailer fire allegedly caused by a defectively designed Whirlpool dryer. The plaintiffs’ expert, who had never examined the dryer as it had been discarded, nevertheless opined that lint from the dryer somehow collected in a corrugated exhaust shoot, backed up through the mechanical systems of the dryer, caught fire in the tumbler, smoldered when the dryer shut off, was reignited by oxygen when the door was opened and then ignited the clothes in the dryer. Plaintiffs claimed a safer alternative design would have utilized a smooth exhaust shoot. The sole support for the opinion of plaintiffs’ expert was a review of an allegedly similar dryer and Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) reports of various dryer tests. The jury accepted the assessment and awarded $14 million in damages against Whirlpool.
The Texas Supreme Court conducted a full review of the expert evidence and found Plaintiff’s expert ultimately unreliable under Robinson v. Merrill-Dow. For example, plaintiffs’ expert had not conducted any tests on the dryer in question nor on any similar dryer and could not explain why tests to see if the model in question posed such a risk wasn’t feasible. Further, his opinions were made solely for litigation. Finally, the only data he did rely upon was not sufficiently similar to that for the dryer and circumstances in Camacho’s case to make it reliable.
With this opinion the Texas Supreme Court has again confirmed that the mere ipse dixit of an expert witness is not sufficient to establish the reliability of the Robinson relevance/reliability analysis.
