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.”