The United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois barred plaintiff’s experts, including a bio-mechanic from giving expert opinions on medical causation. In McCann v. Ill. Central R.R. Co. 711 F. Sup. 2d 861 (C.D. Ill. 2010) plaintiff was a former locomotive engineer who sued the defendant claiming that repetitive traumar/motion ‘ type injuries to his neck and wrist, resulting in a carpal tunnel syndrome, were caused by the railroad’s negligence. A bio-mechanic, Tyler Kress, testified that plaintiff experienced years of spinal degradation and that there was evidence of joint degeneration and problems after a number of years of railroad work that progressed over the years, resulting in anatomical damage.
In barring Kresses’ opinion, the court referred to the fact that it had done so in a prior case involving the same defendant and as in that case Kress did not do an independent investigation as to the plaintiff’s work, had no evidence of the amount of pressure or repetition necessary to cause the injuries, did not quantitatively measure the plaintiff’s exposure to the relative risk factors in performing his job duties and did not apply the facts of the plaintiff’s case to existing studies so that the opinion could be tested or reviewed.
The Court said: “Same is true here and this Court concludes, as it did in Meyers that Kresse’s conclusions are based simply on his own speculation as to the details of plaintiff’s work, which is insufficient to establish that his views are supported by a scientifically reliable method.”
The Court cited other cases in which the opinions of an ergonomic expert were not sufficiently reliable where those opinions were not subjected to scientific method and consisted mainly of unsupported conclusions.