Plaintiff Brooke Mann suffered serious injuries at a music festival in September 2021 when a shuttle tram on which she was riding tipped over on a sloped roadway.
The Lost Lands Music Festival takes place each September at Legend Valley, a large outdoor venue near Buckeye Lake and Thornville, Ohio. The multi-day festival is dinosaur-themed and features electronic dance music. About 30,000 people attended the festival in 2021.
Defendant Apex Event Management LLC is a Delaware company with its principle place of business in California. It promoted the festival in 2021, as it had previously. To present the festival, Apex contracted with other entities and individuals to acquire the necessary rights, to book talent, to market and sell tickets, and to obtain the goods and services needed for putting on the festival.
Apex acquired the right to use Legend Valley through Defendant Trickle Productions LLC, an Ohio business.
Plaintiff sued Apex Event Management, LLC and Trickle Productions, LLC whom she alleges are responsible for the accident under Ohio’s legal standards governing negligence.
Plaintiff’s expert, James Crawford, has issued three separate reports. Apex and Trickle moved to strike the third report, dated December 12, 2024.
Accident Reconstruction Expert Witness
James B. Crawford is a forensic engineer and accident reconstructionist. He provides vehicular accident reconstruction services and has reconstructed over 750 accidents. He has provided expert testimony in Federal, State, and Municipal Courts.
Discussion by the Court
Defendants contended that Plaintiff improperly produced the third report after the Court’s August 26, 2024 deadline for the production of primary expert reports and even after the October 26, 2024 deadline for fact discovery.
Whether the Third Report Qualifies as a Supplemental Disclosure
Crawford’s third report is presented as a complete, stand-alone report. Even so, Plaintiff characterizes it as a supplemental disclosure under Rule 26(e)(2). She argued that disclosure of the third report was required because of new information she learned after Crawford prepared his second report.
Zemba’s corporate representative, Bryan Paisley’s deposition did reveal a new fact – that in the course of creating the reconfigured section, Zemba placed dirt on top of the section of the road where the accident occurred. Had Crawford’s third report incorporated additional material to address that possibly new fact, then the Court would be inclined to agree with Plaintiff’s characterization of the third report as a supplemental disclosure. However, the third report did not even acknowledge, let alone discuss, the fact that dirt had been placed on top of the section of road where the accident occurred.
The new “fact” which the third report instead addresses does not relate to the physical changes to the road but rather to Zemba’s motive in creating the new section of road. Paisley testified that Zemba built the new section – straighter and not as steep as the old section – because it would be easier for its dump trucks to use.
The third report treated Paisley’s testimony as an admission that the old road was “unsafe.” Not only has Crawford mischaracterized Paisley’s testimony – insofar as Paisley testified that the new section was safer, not that the old section was unsafe – but the third report did not include any reconsideration of the conditions of the accident-scene road in light of Paisley’s testimony about dirt being placed on top of it during the 2022 reconfiguration. The Court thus found that the third report is not responsive to “information that was not available at the time” of the second report.
Whether the Untimely Disclosure is Substantially Justified or Harmless
The third report was indeed a surprise. Following the grant of prior extensions, the Court set a strict deadline of August 26, 2024 for the production of primary expert reports. It also set a dispositive motion deadline of December 20, 2024, and advised the parties that no further extensions would be granted. Plaintiff waited until after these deadlines to disclose the third report, and she did so only once Defendants’ motions for summary judgment were filed.
The Court noted that the additional scope of Crawford’s third report (as compared to the second report) went beyond addressing Paisley’s purported admission that the accident-scene road was unsafe. Crawford added content discussing the Federal Highway Administration’s standards for the design and maintenance of gravel roads, the classification of the tram as a “commercial vehicle,” and the resulting implications under federal and state law.
Because all of this additional material was first disclosed in the third report, Defendants did not have notice of Crawford’s new opinions until after the close of expert and fact discovery and after Defendants had moved for summary judgment.
Held
The Court granted the Defendants’ motion to strike the third report of Plaintiff’s expert James Crawford.
Key Takeaway:
While Defendants acknowledged that the new matters addressed in the third report have importance, Plaintiff has not provided a satisfactory explanation for the late disclosure of the third report. The reconfiguration of the accident road was known to Plaintiff several months in advance of the deadline for primary expert reports. To the extent Paisley’s deposition revealed a new fact (the placing of dirt on the old section of road) the third report does not address that fact.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Mann V. Lnkbox Group, Inc. |
| Docket Number: | 2:22cv2553 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Ohio Southern |
| Order Date: | February 12, 2026 |
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