Products Liability Law Daily Wrap Up, DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING DEFECTS—HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS—E.D.N.Y.: With expert’s testimony excluded, design defect claims involving allegedly defective vacuum cleaner could not survive summary judgment, (Oct 20, 2026)

By Nicholas Kaster, J.D.

However, the record contained enough evidence, independent of the expert, to send a failure-to-warn claim to a jury.

A federal district court in New York has excluded expert testimony in a products liability suit brought by husband and wife claimants against two companies over injuries the wife suffered due to an allegedly defective vacuum cleaner. The court found numerous problems with the expert’s opinions. Most significantly, the expert did not test the vacuum on the claimants’ actual wall-to-wall carpeting before preparing his reports. The court held that without his testimony, there was insufficient evidence upon which a reasonable jury could find that the vacuum’s design was defective. Accordingly, the court granted the companies’ motion for summary judgment on the design defect claims. However, the court denied their motion for summary judgment on the other claims. Thus, the case will proceed to trial on the claimants’ failure-to-warn and implied-warranty theories and on the husband’s derivative claim for loss of consortium (Ingoglia v. Kohl’s Inc., No. 1:23-cv-03021-FB-RML (E.D.N.Y. Oct. 19, 2026)).

Background. A woman alleged that she was injured when she fell while vacuuming the carpet in her home using a vacuum designed by SharkNinja Operating LLC (Shark) and sold to her by Kohl’s Inc. She alleged that the vacuum snagged onto her thick plush carpet, and that when she pulled back on the vacuum to free it, it suddenly released, causing her to fall backwards and suffer injury. The woman sued the two companies, alleging several theories of harm. She claimed that the vacuum’s nozzle was defectively designed in failing to allow sufficient airflow to minimize the product’s suction force. The strength of the vacuum’s force allegedly led her to forcefully pull back on the vacuum, and the sudden release that resulted caused her fall. She further alleged that the vacuum “failed to provide any warning of this foreseeable occurrence.” She claimed that the companies breached the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Finally, the woman’s husband claimed loss of consortium. The companies moved to exclude the testimony of the claimants’ sole expert and for summary judgment and dismissal of the complaint.

Motion to preclude expert testimony. The claimants’ sole expert opined that the design of the Shark vacuum was defective and that Shark failed to appropriately warn users of the vacuum’s dangers.

The expert opined that the design of the vacuum was defective in three ways: (1) it lacked a suction reduction valve; (2) it lacked a height adjustment to reduce drag; and (3) it was top-heavy. He further opined that the vacuum should have warned users that the product should not have been used on thick carpets like those in the claimants’ home.

The court found numerous problems with the expert’s opinions. Most significantly, the expert did not test the vacuum on the claimants’ actual wall-to-wall carpeting before preparing his reports. The expert himself recognized the limitations of this approach. He testified that his simulation was “not complete because it wasn’t wall-to-wall carpet,” and that testing the vacuum on the claimants’ actual carpeting in their residence would have been a better simulation. And although his first report warned of the dangers of using the vacuum “on high-nap and/or loose wall-to-wall carpeting,” he conceded that, before writing his reports, he never observed whether the claimants’ carpet was loose or taut.

Nor did the expert’s opinions have quantitative or objective support, said the court. The expert conceded that ergonomic data concerning the amount of work required to operate the vacuum was numerical, but his reports contained no such analysis. And when asked how anyone could verify or peer review his observational findings without numbers, he answered only that others could do so by “observing the same thing.” He likewise acknowledged that airflow and air horsepower are susceptible to numerical calculation, but he performed no such calculations. Although the expert opined that the vacuum produced excessive drag, he conceded that drag can be quantified and measured to determine whether it is high, low, or excessive, yet he did not quantify the drag produced during his testing. More generally, his reports contained virtually no calculations or measurements from his testing, apart from measurements concerning the vacuum’s wheels. Nor did he identify any code, statute, safety standard, or industry standard violated by the vacuum. Indeed, the expert ultimately acknowledged that he had not performed objective or numerical testing or relied upon an industry standard in reaching his conclusions. These deficiencies were especially significant, said the court, because the subjects on which the expert opined—suction, airflow, drag, ergonomic force, and the effect of the vacuum’s interaction with particular carpeting—were themselves measurable. Without testing under conditions reasonably comparable to those of the accident, numerical measurements of the forces he characterized as excessive, or an objective standard against which those measurements could be evaluated, the court lacked a reliable basis for determining whether the expert’s conclusions were “based on sufficient facts or data” or were “the product of reliable principles and methods.”

The expert’s opinions rested on two premises: that the vacuum seals itself to carpets like the claimants’ and that the resulting forces are excessive. He never tested the first on the claimants’ carpet or on carpet shown to be comparable, and he never measured the second. These are not gaps in an otherwise sound analysis; they are the analysis, said the court. What remains is opinion “connected to existing data only by the ipse dixit of the expert,” which no court is required to admit. Because the expert’s opinions lacked an adequate foundation for admissible expert testimony, the companies’ motion to exclude his testimony was granted.

Design defect claims dismissed. Given that the court precluded the claimants’ sole expert from testifying, the question was whether the claimants had enough evidence to proceed to trial on any of their claims without expert testimony. They asserted claims of design defect and failure to warn sounding in both strict liability and negligence. Given that such claims are functionally the same, the court analyzed the strict liability and negligence claims together.

The claimants’ expert dedicated most of his reports to analyzing the vacuum’s defective design, and the court held that without his testimony, there was insufficient evidence upon which a reasonable jury could find that the vacuum’s design was defective.

The wife testified that the vacuum felt “stiff,” had “too much of a grip,” and that it suddenly released. The claimants contended that this lay evidence was sufficient to permit the design defect claim to proceed without expert testimony. Indeed, the court noted, in some circumstances, expert testimony is not required to prove a design defect. In cases where lay testimony is sufficient to allow a reasonable jury to find that the elements of a product defect have been set forth, courts have allowed plaintiffs to proceed even without any expert testimony. However, in such cases, the relevant defects are within the common knowledge of a juror. This is not such a case, the court stated. A lay person would not necessarily find the alleged defects to be obvious, nor would they be able to sufficiently understand the complexities of vacuum design without expert testimony. While the wife’s lay testimony was certainly evidence that the incident happened as she described it, that testimony, standing alone, did not establish the technical propositions necessary for a verdict that the vacuum’s design was defective.

Without the expert’s testimony, said the court, the claimants had no admissible evidence from which a reasonable jury could find a technologically and economically feasible safer alternative design for the vacuum. Because New York law requires such evidence, the negligence and strict liability claims were dismissed to the extent they rested on a design defect theory.

Other claims allowed. However, the claimants’ remaining theories—failure to warn, breach of the implied warranties, and loss of consortium—stood on different footing, said the court. None depended on proof of a feasible alternative design and none required expert testimony.

Unlike a design defect claim, a failure-to-warn claim does not necessarily require expert testimony; a jury may assess the need for, and adequacy of, a warning in light of its own experience. Whether an alternative nozzle or valve design would have prevented the wife’s fall was a question of engineering; whether users should have been told that the vacuum could grip plush carpet and then release suddenly is one a jury could answer from ordinary experience. The record contained enough evidence, independent of the expert, to send the claim to a jury.

The wife testified that the vacuum gripped the carpet with unusual force and then suddenly released; that she read the owner’s manual and quick start guide; and that she “would never have used” the vacuum had she known it could exert such force. The Owner’s Guide cautions that “[s]uction is powerful” and that the vacuum “lifts area rugs,” and the companies’ own expert acknowledged that this caution could be “useful to users who have loose carpeting or higher nap carpeting”; yet none of the Guide’s warnings addresses a sudden release. The companies pointed to their expert’s testing and to hospital notes stating that the wife tripped on, pulled on, or became entangled in the vacuum’s cord. But the wife denied those accounts, and choosing between them is for the jury, said the court. Nor could the court say as a matter of law that she was already “fully aware of the hazard.” Although she had felt the vacuum stiffen and release before, she testified that those releases were “not in any great way” and that she “never thought that it would thrust me in the manner that it did.” A jury could find that an adequate warning would have conveyed the extent of a danger she underestimated.

The court also held that the warranty claims also survived. The warranty claims require no showing of a feasible alternative design; but rather whether the product was fit for its ordinary purpose—that is, whether it was at least “minimally safe for its expected purpose” when used in customary, usual, and reasonably foreseeable ways. Cases dismissing warranty claims after excluding a plaintiff’s expert are therefore distinguishable where, as here, other evidence shows how the product performed in ordinary use. The wife testified that while she was vacuuming the carpet in her loft, the vacuum had “too much of a grip” and then “released where it was holding,” causing her to fall. A jury does not need an expert to decide whether a vacuum advertised for “strong suction and deep cleaning on carpets and floors” is minimally safe if it behaves that way on residential carpet, the court stated.

Finally, because the wife’s failure-to-warn and warranty theories survived, so did her husband’s derivative claim for loss of consortium.

In sum, the companies’ motion for summary judgment was granted as to the negligence and strict liability claims to the extent those claims rested on a design defect theory and was denied in all other respects. Accordingly, the case will proceed to trial on the claimants’ failure-to warn and implied-warranty theories and on the husband’s derivative claim for loss of consortium.

The case is No. 1:23-cv-03021-FB-RML.

Judge: Block, F.

Attorneys: Jonah Grossman (Law Offices of Jonah Grossman) for Jennifer Ingoglia. Christopher Patrick Keenoy (Morrison Mahoney LLP) for Kohl's Inc. and SharkNinja Operating LLC.

Companies: Kohl's Inc.; SharkNinja Operating LLC

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