Larsen v. 401 Main Street, 923 N.W.2d 710

On January 2, 2014, a fire originated in the basement of the Quart House Pub and spread to adjacent property owned by Lee and Amy Larsen and Plattsmouth Chiropractic Center, causing significant damage.
Plaintiff (Plattsmouth Chiropractic) sued the bar owners (Quart House) alleging negligent maintenance/inspection of mechanical equipment in the basement (boiler, water heater, compressors) proximately caused the fire.
The basement equipment was old (boiler ~50+ years); inspections and maintenance had lapsed for 3–4 years prior to the fire; some equipment never received regular inspections.
Plaintiff’s expert (Duane Wolf, mechanical engineer) reviewed documents but could not inspect the scene; he opined the fire likely originated in the boiler area and was due to mechanical failure, but he could not identify a specific failure mode or rule out many other causes.
Defendant’s expert (Kenneth Ward, fire investigator) testified that because no postfire forensic inspection occurred before demolition, there was no adequate scientific basis to determine origin or cause, and Wolf’s methodology did not follow NFPA 921.
The district court struck Wolf’s causation testimony as speculative under Daubert/Schafersman and granted summary judgment for Quart House because, without admissible expert causation evidence, plaintiff could not prove negligent maintenance proximately caused the fire.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Admissibility of Wolf’s expert causation opinion	Wolf’s training and review of records suffice to opine the fire likely originated from boiler/mechanical failure and that proper maintenance would have prevented it	Wolf’s opinions are speculative, not based on accepted origin-and-cause methodology (NFPA 921); absence of postfire inspection prevents reliable causation opinion	Court excluded Wolf’s causation testimony as speculative and not reliably applied to the facts (no abuse of discretion)
Sufficiency of evidence to avoid summary judgment on causation	Circumstantial evidence (smoke above boiler area, cold bar that night, Wolf’s opinion) creates genuine factual dispute on cause and proximate cause	Without an admissible expert tying negligent maintenance to a specific causal mechanism, evidence is only speculation and insufficient to establish proximate cause	Court affirmed summary judgment: plaintiff failed to present admissible evidence that negligent maintenance proximately caused the fire

Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (court acts as gatekeeper to assess relevance and reliability of expert testimony)
Schafersman v. Agland Coop, 262 Neb. 215 (Nebraska application of Daubert framework)
Roskop Dairy v. GEA Farm Tech., 292 Neb. 148 (standard of review on expert admissibility)
Hemsley v. Langdon, 299 Neb. 464 (expert reliability requirement under Daubert/Schafersman)
Freeman v. Hoffman-La Roche, Inc., 300 Neb. 47 (trial court must determine validity of expert methodology and its application)
Sparks v. M&D Trucking, 301 Neb. 977 (summary judgment standard; view evidence for nonmoving party)
King v. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Ry. Co., 277 Neb. 203 (expert opinion cannot rest on unsupported speculation)
Swoboda v. Mercer Mgmt. Co., 251 Neb. 347 (plaintiff must avoid guess or speculation to defeat summary judgment)
Stones v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 251 Neb. 560 (negligence requires proof that act/omission proximately caused injury)