In Killhullen v. Kansas City Southern Railway the Miss. Supreme Court unanimously reversed both the trial court and Court of Appeals granting summary judgment based on KCS’s Daubert challenge of Plaintiff’s expert. This was a crossing accident case. Plaintiff’s expert was a registered professional engineer who made calculations regarding field of vision issues.

The Court rejected KCS’s argument that the expert must be an “accident reconstructionist”:

In rejecting Halfacre’s affidavit due to his lack of “specialized knowledge, training or expertise in the field of accident reconstruction[,]” this Court finds that the circuit court abused its discretion. Given his applied engineering expertise, classification as an accident reconstructionist was not necessary…

This was a sensible decision by the Court. If the issues involve physics, the fact that the expert is not an “accident reconstructionist” should not matter.

I once lost a Daubert challenge of an accident reconstructionist and had to watch him re-create the accident for the jury with a couple of toy matchbox cars. If I had known that was ok, I would have had the 5-year old across the street as my expert.