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Tittsworth v. Robinson9/13/1996
OPINION BY JUSTICE ROSCOE B. STEPHENSON, JR.
The sole issue in this appeal is whether the trial court erred in allowing certain expert testimony.
Jeffrey A. Tittsworth filed a motion for judgment against Stephanie N. Robinson seeking damages for personal injuries he sustained in a motor vehicle collision. The case was tried to a jury which returned a verdict in favor of Robinson. The trial court entered judgment on the verdict, and this appeal ensued.
At the time of the accident, Tittsworth, operating his Mazda van, was leaving a parking lot adjoining Highway Route 610 in Stafford County. While stopped at the lot's exit and waiting for traffic on the highway to clear, a Hyundai automobile operated by Robinson struck the rear of the Mazda.
Rain had been falling that day, and the soles of Robinson's tennis shoes were wet. Robinson's car struck the rear of Tittsworth's van when, as Robinson leaned over to move some curling irons from the front passenger seat to the floor of her car, her foot slipped off the clutch pedal.
At the accident scene, Tittsworth told Robinson that he had not been injured. However, several hours after the collision, Tittsworth began to experience stiffness in his back which became painful and progressively worse, and, two days later, he saw a physician. After undergoing a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan of the lumbar spine, Tittsworth was referred to Dr. Donald G. Hope, a neurosurgeon.
Dr. Hope found that Tittsworth had a herniated disk at the "L5-S1 level." Based upon Tittsworth's medical history, the doctor concluded that the herniated disk in Tittsworth's lumbar spine resulted from the collision.
Robinson presented two expert witnesses in an effort to prove that the collision could not have caused Tittsworth's disk to rupture. Alfred L. Cipriani was qualified as an expert in the field of mechanical engineering and gravity acceleration impact analysis. Dr. Peter H. Abbrecht was qualified as an expert in biomedical engineering and biomechanics.
Cipriani testified that so-called "G force" is the acceleration of gravity, which, he explained, accelerates at 32.2 feet per second, constituting one G. Cipriani concluded that the force experienced by Tittsworth in the collision was not greater than 1.6 G's and that such force is less than many people experience in daily activities.
Cipriani then explained how he reached his Conclusion. He first obtained the identification numbers of the two vehicles involved in the collision. From these numbers, he ascertained the make, model, and year of each vehicle. With this information, he had "a data base available which provided vehicle information such as the wheel base, the overall width, the weight of the car, things like that, so [he could] identify the vehicle more specifically." Cipriani then "looked up crash tests data on substantially similar cars." These tests are conducted by organizations such as the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, and Transport Canada, and they reveal how "stiff" a vehicle is in the front and rear. According to Cipriani, "the amount of crush that occurs to a vehicle for a given speed is dependent upon how stiff the vehicle is." He stated that, having obtained all this information, he then was "ready to look at the photographs [of the vehicles involved in the collision] and to start to do an analysis."
After looking at the photographs, Cipriani "assumed half of an inch of permanent crush of the whole width and whole height of the back of the ." He also "assumed a half of an inch of crush damage over the width of the entire
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