United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ No. 22-2825 JASON BURNS, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. SHERWIN-WILLIAMS CO., Defendant-Appellee. ____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. No. 1:19-cv-5258 — Steven C. Seeger, Judge. ____________________

ARGUED APRIL 19, 2023 — DECIDED AUGUST 15, 2023 ____________________

Before HAMILTON, BRENNAN, and KIRSCH, Circuit Judges. KIRSCH, Circuit Judge. Jason Burns, a truck driver, injured himself while delivering products to a Sherwin-Williams paint supply store. Burns and a store employee used the com- pany’s walkie—a hand-operated electric forklift—to move pallets holding the products from Burns’s truck, up a small ramp, and into the store’s warehouse. When they finished un- loading, Burns backed the walkie down the ramp in reverse to return the now-empty pallets to his truck. He moved in the 2 No. 22-2825 direction of a dumpster and other pallets that were laying on the ground beside it. But as he approached the pallets and dumpster, Burns miscalculated how long it would take to stop the walkie. He failed to stop it as he approached the pal- lets, trapping his foot and breaking his ankle. Burns sued Sherwin-Williams, alleging that the company failed to exercise ordinary care by leaving the empty pallets in the work area and providing an unsafe walkie. Sherwin- Williams moved for summary judgment, arguing that it owed no duty to Burns under Illinois law and that Burns had failed to produce evidence suggesting that the walkie was unsafe. Sherwin-Williams also moved to exclude one of Burns’s ex- perts, arguing that the expert’s opinions were unreliable and unhelpful. The district court granted both motions, and Burns now appeals. We affirm. I Jason Burns worked as a truck driver for a transportation management company. As part of his job, he delivered prod- ucts to various Sherwin-Williams stores and helped with the unloading process. In May 2018, Burns made a delivery to the Sherwin-Williams store in Bolingbrook, Illinois. Burns drove to the back of the store and backed up in front of the garage. A ramp with a slight slope of about four degrees led from the parking area up to the garage door. A large dumpster was No. 22-2825 3 located several feet to the right of the ramp. The photograph below shows their relative locations.

The scene looked a little different on the day of the accident, however. Unlike in the photograph above, in which there is just one pallet beside the dumpster, there were multiple pal- lets stacked alongside the dumpster when Burns made his de- livery. These pallets were about three to four feet from the slope’s edge, as shown in the next photograph (which we’ve rotated for an easier view). 4 No. 22-2825

When Burns arrived at the store, the only Sherwin-Wil- liams employee on site, Ramiro Bahena, came out to help un- load the products from the pallets. Burns climbed inside the trailer and moved the pallets to the edge of the truck. Bahena then used a walkie forklift—which is depicted in the photo- graph above—to lift the pallets out of the truck and move them up the small ramp into the warehouse. A walkie differs from a prototypical forklift. It has the rec- ognizable set of forks for moving freight but is much smaller than a standard forklift, and its operator walks behind it ra- ther than in or on it (hence, “walkie”). The operator controls the walkie’s direction with a thumb switch. Walkies can stop o