Defendants owned and managed an apartment complex called The Trails at Flat Rock in Columbus, Georgia. In October of 2022, a fire occurred in Building A of the apartment complex. Kevin Ford, who was staying in unit A-24 with tenant Anthony Thorpe, died in the fire. Plaintiff, the administrator of Ford’s estate, asserted negligence claims against Defendants based on Ford’s death, alleging that Defendants’ negligence caused Ford’s death and pre-death pain and suffering.
Plaintiff intended to support these claims with the expert testimony of Kevin Foster and Lisa Detter-Hoskin. Defendants argued that the testimony of these two experts should be excluded.
Burns Expert Witness
Dr. Kevin Foster is the Director of Burn Services at the Diane & Bruce Halle Arizona Burn Center Valleywise Health. Foster is a medical doctor who has specialized in burn care since 1999.
Chemistry Expert Witness
Lisa Detter-Hoskin has a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry with minor focus in analytical chemistry from Purdue University. She has successfully completed the National Association of Corrosion Engineers Basic Corrosion Science class.
Detter-Hoskin was a lead expert who worked 10 years on the United States’ largest chlorine spill which occurred when Norfolk Southern Railway derailed a train and released chlorine onto Avondale Mills and residences in Graniteville, SC on January 6, 2005.
Discussion by the Court
Foster opined that Ford’s death was caused by a combination of smoke inhalation and burn injury, as opposed to solely smoke inhalation injury. Foster also concluded that Ford suffered conscious pain and suffering from his burns before his death.
Defendants contended that Foster’s testimony should be excluded as unreliable because Foster’s opinions are speculative and not based on reliable principles that would assist the trier of fact.
I. Defendants’ Motion to Exclude Kevin Foster
To prepare his report, Foster relied on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s (“GBI”) autopsy report and photographs, the Muscogee County Coroner’s Report, Columbus Fire Department and Columbus Police Department reports and photographs, Thorpe’s deposition, and other photographs from the fire scene. Defendants did not appear to challenge Foster’s basic methodology, which was to consider all the medical records, photographs, and reports available to him and determine Ford’s cause of death based on that information and his training, experience, and skill as a burn care physician.
Rather, Defendants challenged Foster’s conclusions—including his conclusion that Ford was conscious at the time of the fire and experienced pain and suffering due to burns before he died. According to Defendants, Foster misinterpreted the evidence and reached the wrong conclusions about whether Ford was asleep at the time of the fire. Foster, though, explained why he interpreted the evidence as he did and how he reached his conclusions that Ford was conscious and trying to escape the fire when he suffered burns. The Court found that Defendants’ criticisms of Foster’s testimony went to its weight, not its admissibility. Thus, based on the present record, the Court did not find that Foster’s methodology was unreliable.
Defendants also criticized Foster’s analysis as a “cut and paste job” because Foster mistakenly referred to a “Mr. Noble” in two places in his report. The Court declined to exclude Foster’s testimony because of the mistakes in his report.
II. Defendants’ Motion to Exclude Lisa Detter-Hoskin
Defendants also sought to exclude the testimony of Plaintiff’s rebuttal expert, Lisa Detter-Hoskin. Plaintiff hired Detter-Hoskin to rebut certain opinions offered by the Defendants’ fire investigation expert.
Defendants argued that Detter-Hoskin’s opinions are outside the scope of permitted rebuttal testimony under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Defendants argued that Detter-Hoskin’s testimony did not rebut expert opinions as to the cause of the damage to the backplate of the cooking range because the expert in question did not “opine as to what caused the damage to the back plate of the range.”
After examining and analyzing materials from the kitchen of unit A-23, Detter-Hoskin opined that “the damage to the cooking range back plate and aluminum backsplash was not the result of the direct flame impingement, radiant heat, or conductive heat from the fall down debris located to the left of the stove.” Thus, Detter-Hoskin’s conclusions directly contradicted expert opinions as to the cause of the damage to the stove backsplash and back part of the range. Accordingly, the Court found that Detter-Hoskin is a proper rebuttal expert under Rule (26)(a)(2)(D)(ii).
Held
The Court denied the Defendants’ motions to exclude the testimony of Kevin Foster and Lisa Detter-Hoskin.
Key Takeaway:
A rebuttal report may not advance a completely new legal theory, but courts must examine the primary expert reports to determine whether the rebuttal report is truly “new” or merely uses different terminology to address issues that were raised in the primary expert reports.
Please refer to the blog previously published about this case:
Fire Investigation Expert’s Analysis of Burn Patterns Admitted
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Washington V. GWR Management LLC Et Al |
| Docket Number: | 4:24cv81 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Georgia Middle |
| Order Date: | October 21, 2025 |
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