An appellate court has reversed a San Bernardino Superior Court ruling that excluded three expert witnesses from testifying in trial.
The experts were set to testify whether Melvin Garner’s exposure to substances during his four decades as a trainman at BNSF Railway Co. caused his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which ultimately resulted in his death in 2014.
Garner’s son, Gary, sued the railway in San Bernardino Superior Court in 2017. He argued that exposure to diesel exhaust, benzene, rock dust, asbestos fibers and creosote caused the disease. His case relied upon the statements of Dr. Andrew Salmon, Dr. Joseph Landolph and Dr. Robert Gale.
The BNSF argued that the science these experts relied on was inadequate, and that there was too great a gap between the available data and their conclusions. The trial court agreed with the railway, and entered judgment in favor of the railway.
The Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division One, found that the experts should not have been excluded from testifying.
The court’s ruling reflected a misunderstanding of law, their opinion says.
“There is no requirement that a causation expert rely on a specific study or other scientific publication expressing precisely the same conclusion at which the expert has arrived,” their published ruling says.
The ruling goes on to say that some propositions are too niche, too recent or too specific to be published, and that a litigant’s day in court should not be denied because the medical literature has not yet been completed.
The ruling also said that a court should not supplant the role of the expert to provide scientific judgment and the jury’s role to weigh it.
“It is not the trial court’s proper function to second-guess the judgment of a qualified expert who has provided a reasonable scientific explanation for his conclusions and used a scientifically accepted methodology for reaching them based on the available data, even if the data itself is inconclusive,” the ruling said.
Delores Yarnall of The Yarnall Firm represented Garner.
Joseph Mascovich of Pacific Employment Law; Anthony Sonnett and V. Alan Arshansky of Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith and Selim Mounedji of Sims Law Firm represented BNSF Railway.
Associate Justice Martin Buchanan wrote the opinion, which Associate Justices Judith McConnell and Truc Do joined.
Trial court Case No. CIVDS1720288
Appellate Case No. D082229
Read the ruling here.
