4th Circuit Rejects Disabled Teen's 'Particle Jamming' Theory

The 4th Circuit has affirmed summary judgment for Nissan North America in a steering defect case, rejecting the plaintiff's contention that microscopic contamination led to a gear jam, which caused the driver to lose control of the vehicle.

In the 1997 accident at issue Troy Boss, 16, a passenger in a 1987 Nissan Sentra, was permanently disabled. He claimed in Maryland state court that the driver had lost control because particle contamination caused the steering gear to jam.

Boss named Nissan, Jiffy Lube International and Eberle Enterprises as defendants, alleging that, prior to the accident, Jiffy Lube serviced the car and Eberle performed the state inspection.

Nissan removed the action to the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, contending that Jiffy Lube and Eberle, both Maryland companies, had been fraudulently joined.

Boss moved for remand, and the motion was denied. The District Court then granted Nissan's motion to exclude his four expert witnesses and entered summary judgment for the automaker.

Affirming, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit first noted that each non-diverse defendant had been fraudulently joined and that the case belonged in the federal court.

The panel said the plaintiff's experts were properly excluded under Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993), which governs the reliability of expert testimony.

The experts could not draw any reliable conclusions concerning the existence of particles in power steering fluid because the probability of a particle jam has never been established, the appeals court said.

The experts did not perform field tests to support their theory, the panel added, and their conclusions were unreliable because they did not determine the amount of force needed to crush a particle jammed in the steering system.

The appeals court said the risk of a steering malfunction due to particle jamming was not generally accepted in the engineering community, citing a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finding.

"There must be a logical connection between the expert's theory and the facts of the case," the panel said, concluding that the connection did not exist here.

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