An aerospace and defense company wants a Florida federal judge to disqualify the expert witnesses presented by property owners who have accused it of contaminating their water supply and devaluing their homes.
The Lawsuits
Five married couples who have children who are members of a pediatric brain tumor cluster designated by the Florida Department of Health and two property owners who claim their land is far less valuable because of soil contamination filed two consolidated suits against United Technologies Corporation, which does business as Pratt & Whitney. The parties claim that the company sent toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the porous underground aquifer that their properties share.
The cases are Cotromano et al. v. United Technologies Corp. et al., case number 9:13-cv-80928, and Adinolfe et al. v. United Technologies Corp., case number 9:10-cv-80840, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
The total claims are estimated at $1 billion. The cases were initially dismissed by the trial court, but were reinstated by the Eleventh Circuit, which ruled that the trial court had erred in requiring excessive factual proof at the dismissal stage of litigation.
The Experts
The plaintiffs retained numerous experts to help them prove their claim. Pratt & Whitney filed motions arguing that each of those experts should be excluded.
The plaintiffs presented Dr. Marco Kaltofen as an expert to testify that there is evidence that the plaintiffs had been exposed to contaminants that originated at the Pratt & Whitney facility. Pratt & Whitney argued that Dr. Kaltofen’s testimony should be excluded because he failed to apply or identify a methodology that would allow him to conclude that there was radioactive contamination in the property. Pratt & Whitney also claimed that Dr. Kaltofen’s testimony failed to identify any actual source of materials or address how the materials were allegedly transported to the plaintiffs’ properties.
The plaintiffs presented toxicologist Dr. William Sawyer to support their claims. Pratt & Whitney argued that Dr. Sawyer’s opinions should be excluded as lacking in fit because they are “fundamentally unreliable.” Pratt & Whitney noted that Dr. Sawyer had not issued an expert report in support of the plaintiffs’ property claims; instead, the plaintiffs relied upon Dr. Sawyer’s previously-disclosed cause opinions from three personal injury cases. Pratt & Whitney argued that because none of the other personal injury cases dealt with the cancer cluster designation, Dr. Sawyer’s opinions were not relevant here. Pratt & Whitney also argued that Dr. Sawyer’s methodology was unreliable. The company noted that for two plaintiffs, Dr. Sawyer had no calculation of the alleged dose of Thorium-230 to which they were exposed. For another plaintiff, Dr. Sawyer relied upon a flowed dose calculation that was based on samples taken from her spine years after she was diagnosed with brain cancer.
The plaintiffs presented Dr. Bernd Franke as a radiological researcher to support their claims. Pratt & Whitney argued that Dr. Franke’s testimony should be excluded because there was no fit between his analyses and any issue to be resolved at trial, he relied upon improper and unjustified assumptions, and his methodology was not reliable. Pratt & Whitney noted that Dr. Franke’s testimony was only related to one individual who was not part of the cancer cluster identified by the FDOH.
The parties participated in a seven-hour hearing on the issues, but the matter remains unresolved. The hearing was continued and the parties were instructed to contact the court with their available dates in the next two weeks.
