On April 12, 2008, plaintiffs Georgia Clanin, 70, a retiree, and her husband, Steven Clanin, 60, an engineer, purchased KYMCO MXU 300 all-terrain vehicles. That same day they took their ATVs on a test ride on a dirt road in the Sierra foothills. During the test ride and after the sun had set, Mrs. Clanin crashed while going down a 12-degree slope. She claimed she sustained to her head, lung, ribs and back in the accident. Plaintiffs sued KYMCO USA Inc., the ATV importer and distributer, as well as RPS Motor Sports, the ATV dealer, for products liability — design defect and manufacturing defect. The trial court granted a nonsuit to the plaintiffs’ failure to warn claim premised on the failure of plaintiffs to review the owner’s manual prior to riding the ATVs. The court sustained KYMCO’s objection to the consumer expectations instruction for design defect based on a lack of evidence of any objective safety standard with which the ATV failed to comply and based on the fact that plaintiffs’ theory of defect was complicated and could not be understood without the testimony of experts. Mr. Clanin claimed that he observed the brake lights on his wife’s ATV go on and then saw the ATV do a triple front flip. The Clanins claimed that they were both going only 8 to 10 mph at the time of the crash. Mr. Clanin also testified that the road at the scene of the accident was smooth without any ruts, bumps or erosion. On the night of the accident, Mr. Clanin told the 911 operator and the California Highway Patrol officer that his wife was going too fast and hit a bump. At trial he claimed that he assumed she hit a bump, as there was no other reason for her to crash. However, he also testified that before making those statements he had been at the scene for a half hour or more with lights illuminating the road conditions. The Clanins claimed that the crash was caused by the KYMCO brake system. Plaintiffs’ expert in ATV mechanic and ride and ATV trail construction and maintenance testified that there was inadequate clearance between the brake pads and rotors, which generated excessive heat to such an extent that when Mrs. Clanin applied the brakes just before the accident, the pads momentarily “seized” on the rotors, causing the front brakes to lock up. He also claimed that the excessive heat caused the brake fluid to expand beyond the capacity of the master cylinder. The expert was not allowed to testify that this caused the ATV to flip, due to a failure to establish expertise as an accident reconstructionist. Plaintiffs’ accident reconstructionist calculated Mr. Clanin’s speed and assumed that Mrs. Clanin was traveling at the same rate of speed. The California Highway Patrol officer who investigated the crash testified that the accident scene was rutted, bumpy and eroded and concluded that the cause of the crash was Mrs. Clanin traveling at an unsafe speed for the conditions. Defense experts testified that the design of the ATV was sound and was not a cause of the accident. KYMCO’s brake expert and accident reconstructionist testified that the pad and rotor clearances were normal and were not the cause of the accident. He explained how disc brake systems are floating systems that are designed to have minimal clearances. The expert conducted testing that demonstrated that the brake fluid would not have expanded to any significant extent and would not have caused the fluid to expand beyond the master cylinder’s capacity. He testified that there was no heat damage to the pads and rotors on Mrs. Clanin’s ATV and showed photographs and exemplars of pads and rotors that were exposed to excessive heat. KYMCO’s ATV expert and accident reconstructionist testified that the KYCMO ATV complied with all American National Standard for Four Wheel All-Terrain Vehicles standards, including the brake, stability, suspension and lighting standards. He conducted testing that demonstrated that the clearances between the pads and rotors on Mrs. Clanin’s ATV would not have generated any significant heat and had no role in the cause of the accident. Based on the damage to the vehicle, he provided speed calculations and demonstrated that the ATV hit an object in the road that caused the vehicle to yaw to the left and roll in a lateral manner. He testified that it would not be possible for the ATV to engage in a front flip, much less a triple front flip, based on the speed and slope of the hill. In support of this, he showed a video of his riding through the accident scene and locking up the brakes. The trial was bifurcated between liability and damages., Plaintiffs’ biomechanical expert testified as to the amount of force required to have caused Mrs. Clanin’s and that such force came from the ATV impacting her body longitudinally. Mrs. Clanin was taken to the hospital via a helicopter. Plaintiffs would have asserted that Mrs. Clanin sustained a concussion, a punctured lung, broken ribs and lower back necessitating a bilateral spinal fusion in February 2010. Mr. Clanin sought recovery for loss of consortium. As the trial did not go into the damages phase, no amount of damages was claimed.