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Barrett v. ERA Avaition2/25/2000
retion in deciding whether to qualify a witness as an expert and to admit opinion evidence. In City of Fairbanks v. Nesbett, we said the decision was entrusted to the "sound discretion" of the trial court. In Ferrell v. Baxter, we referred to the "wide discretion" and the "wide latitude" afforded to trial judges in deciding these evidentiary questions. In Norris v. Gatts, we repeated the phrase "wide discretion" in the same context. In this case, Judge Hensley carefully exercised his discretion, allowing virtually all of the testimony Barrett sought to adduce and excluding only two questions on what might be termed the "ultimate" issues in the case: the standard of care and whether ERA breached it. Even with these limitations, Barrett was allowed to establish, through Spencer, all of the following:
• that during the period "four months prior to the incident three months after the incident, [there were] a tremendous amount of write-ups of pressurization, much more than industry standard on this aircraft."
• that "there was something wrong with this airplane, with the pressurization."
• that Spencer did not "find any documentation of a systematic troubleshooting of the entire pressurization system."
• that as "of December, 1990, that there's something wrong with the pressurization system and the compressor probably very well contributed to it."
• that "the reason [Spencer thought that the cabin pressurization fluctuated on the flight in question] is the history of all the records saw on . . . this aircraft and its problems with the pressurization."
• that "ERA's continued operation of the aircraft once the pressurization system problems were apparent as a result of the flight crew write-ups and the persistent use of oxygen reckless." (Emphasis added.)
Thus, it is clear that the trial judge allowed very extensive opinion testimony by Spencer. (Indeed, the last piece of testimony set out above appears to be evidence that the standard of care had been breached.) Considering that Spencer had no training or experience as a mechanic and had never done repairs on the aircraft pressurization system, and given the breadth of the testimony by Spencer which the trial court did allow, I do not believe that we can fairly say that the judge abused his broad discretion in drawing the line that he did.
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