Morrison Mahoney Partner Sean Milano was quoted in this week’s edition of Lawyers Weekly. In Fogarty v. Whole Foods Market Group Inc., it was determined that an engineering expert who investigated the scene of a trip and fall two years after it occurred did not provide a reliable basis for his opinion that the plaintiff’s foot caught on a staircase tread that had come loose due to metal corrosion and concrete deterioration in a ruling by the U.S. District Court.

The plaintiff’s expert examined the staircase in May 2019 – two years after the plaintiff suffered injuries (Feb 2017). U.S. Court Judge Denise J. Casper in Boston ruled that the plaintiff’s expert provided “no scientific rationale for why the state of corrosion and deterioration in 2019 proves that a similar state existed in 2017.”

Sean agreed with Judge Casper and the importance of focusing on the expert’s lack of application of scientific methodology in the ruling. Read more here [subscription]