## Facts

- Levone Butts, as executrix of the Estate of Glen Butts, sued homeowners Lloyd and Georgia Weisz in federal court, asserting Pennsylvania claims for wrongful death, survival, and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
- Glen and Levone Butts were visiting the Weiszes at their Pennsylvania home for a social visit.
- During the visit, 84-year-old Glen Butts suffered a fatal fall down a basement stairwell; no one saw the fall occur.
- The area near the basement stairwell was described as dimly lit and included a single step leading into or near the stairway area, which plaintiff characterized as dangerous.
- The Buttses had been in the home for several hours, and Glen had crossed the same single-step area successfully multiple times earlier that day.
- Levone alleged that the dim lighting and the single step constituted negligent conditions that caused Glen to fall.
- Levone retained an expert who was prepared to testify that the dim lighting and single step caused Glen’s fall.
- The district court, applying Federal Rule of Evidence 702, barred the expert from offering a case-specific opinion that these conditions caused Glen’s fall, reasoning that the opinion lacked an adequate factual basis given the unwitnessed fall.
- The court permitted only more general testimony (for example, that a single step in poor lighting can be hazardous and might cause a person with a normal gait to trip and fall).
- After the limitation on expert testimony, the Weiszes moved for summary judgment, arguing the record contained no admissible evidence of factual causation.

## Issues

1. Did the district court abuse its discretion under Federal Rule of Evidence 702 by excluding the plaintiff’s expert opinion that the single step and dim lighting caused Glen Butts’s unwitnessed fall?
2. After exclusion of the case-specific causation opinion, did the plaintiff present sufficient evidence of factual causation under Pennsylvania negligence law to avoid summary judgment?

## Decision

- The Third Circuit affirmed.
- The court held the district court acted within its discretion in limiting the expert’s testimony because the proposed causation opinion rested on speculation rather than sufficient case-specific facts or data.
- The court held that, without admissible expert testimony tying the alleged conditions to the fall and without other non-speculative evidence of how the fall happened, a jury would be left to guess at causation.
- The court therefore upheld summary judgment for the Weiszes on the ground that causation could not be established on this record.

## Legal Principles

- Federal Rule of Evidence 702 permits opinion testimony only when it is supported by sufficient facts or data and is the product of reliable methods properly applied to the facts of the case; an opinion about what caused an unwitnessed accident cannot be based only on the occurrence of the accident near an allegedly hazardous condition.
- A trial court may allow general hazard testimony (what conditions can do in general) while excluding a case-specific causation conclusion when the record lacks a factual basis to connect the general hazard to what occurred.
- Under Pennsylvania negligence law, a plaintiff must present evidence from which a reasonable jury can find factual causation; causation may be proven circumstantially, but it cannot rest on stacked inferences or conjecture.
- On summary judgment, if the admissible evidence would require a jury to speculate about how an injury occurred, judgment as a matter of law is appropriate.

## Conclusion

Because no one saw Glen Butts fall and the record did not supply enough facts to support a reliable, case-specific opinion that the single step or dim lighting caused the fall, the district court properly limited the expert’s testimony under Rule 702; with no remaining non-speculative evidence of causation, the Third Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the homeowners.


Butts v. Weisz, 410 F. App’x 470 (2010)