The judge threw out a Ford Motor Co. defense witness Thursday as a sanction for what he said was the automaker's lawyers' failure to comply with his orders governing a wrongful death product liability trial over roof crush claims.

Gwinnett County State Court Judge Shawn Bratton told the jury after lunch Thursday to disregard the testimony of Ford expert Dr. Thomas McNish, a medical doctor and aerospace expert who had been on the stand for two days. Bratton told the jury he had issued constraints in advance about what the witness was qualified to discuss. Ford's lawyers, Bratton said, “willfully violated those orders.”

Bratton told the jury to forget everything McNish had said. “Disregard the testimony of Dr. McNish in its entirety,” Bratton said. “Erase it from your memory.”

It was the latest drama in a contentious trial nearing the end of its third week. Courtroom View Network is recording and live streaming the trial. Kim and Adam Hill alleged their parents died because the truck's roof was weak and flattened on rollover. Ford argued that its roof was “reasonably safe” and that strengthening a roof is complicated.

Under direct examination by Ford lead counsel D. Alan Thomas of Huie Fernambucq & Stewart of Birmingham, Alabama, McNish had testified at length, talking about physics, rotational speed, “tangential velocity” and the center of gravity in a rollover crash that killed Melvin and Voncile Hill in their F-250 Ford Super Duty pickup truck.

The Hills' lead counsel, Jim Butler of Butler Wooten & Peak in Columbus and Atlanta, had objected repeatedly about Thomas leading the witness.

“Mr. Thomas, please try not to lead the witness,” Bratton had said.

Just before the lunch break, Thomas had asked McNish for his opinion about what killed the Hills. McNish said he believed they died from bumping their heads on different parts of the truck as it rolled, not from the roof crushing them.

Of Mrs. Hill, he said, “The roof stayed still. Her body moving toward her head is what caused the injury.”

Of Mr. Hill, McNish said that he was injured from bruising on the side and back of his head during the roll. “There was no evidence of force on the top of the head,” McNish said.

Butler objected, saying McNish was not qualified to draw such conclusions and that the court's order prevented the doctor from testifying about the cause of death.

The judge sent the jury out for a lunch break, after which he told them of his decision to toss the witness. Bratton told the jurors he was sorry that the trial will not finish this week as planned but will likely go on into next week. Then he gave them the rest of the day off and told them to report back at 9 a.m. Friday.

But even those plans could change. The judge is now considering mistrial motions from both sides: Ford on the grounds that the defense is disabled by the loss of the witness and the Hills on the charge that the jury is tainted by violations of court orders.

The week opened with a Monday morning motion from Butler asking the judge to toss Ford's entire defense on the grounds that a cross-examination last week violated the judge's orders for the trial. But Bratton allowed Ford to begin presenting its defense, which it has been doing for the past three days.

The case is Hill v. Ford, No. 16 C 04179-2.