DISCLAIMER: The following unofficial case summaries are prepared by the clerk's office
as a courtesy to the reader. They are not part of the opinion of the court.
212898P.pdf 08/26/2022 Elizabeth Zick v. Paccar, Inc.
U.S. Court of Appeals Case No: 21-2898
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa - Eastern
[PUBLISHED] [Wollman, Author, with Colloton and Shepherd, Circuit Judges]
Civil case - Products liability. Plaintiff's expert's second report was
untimely under the discovery orders in the case, and the district court
did not abuse its discretion by excluding it from plaintiff's
case-in-chief or in admitting the written and photographic contents of the
report on rebuttal, or by excluding the report's videos from the entire
case; the district court did not abuse its discretion by concluding that
plaintiff had failed to show the good cause required under Fed. R. Civ. P.
16(b)(4) to modify the scheduling order after the court declared a
mistrial; plaintiff failed to object to admission of testimony regarding
defendant's "state-of-the-art" defense, and did not preserve the issue for
appeal; considering the claim under the plain error standard, the district
court did not plainly err in admitting the testimony as the witnesses were
testifying based on their extensive industry experience, and Iowa law
permits industry custom as evidence of the state of the art; even assuming
the district court erred in admitting testimony on what plaintiff claims
were irrelevant industry standards, the evidence was unlikely to have had
more than a slight influence on the verdict.