What Lawyers Do

A New Jersey Appeals Court ruled last week that the plaintiff in a rollover case involving a 2000 Ford Explorer who lost at trial will have a second bite at the apple since the trial judge gave improper instructions to the jury.

More specifically, the trial judge refused to give a limiting instruction that evidence of the plaintiff’s negligence was not to be considered in determining the threshold question of: was the vehicle defectively designed?

Once that question was decided by the jury, only then could it take plaintiff’s conduct into account. In other words, how the plaintiff acted or failed to act right before the rollover occurred has no bearing on whether that model Explorer was a defective product.

Let’s pull off into the breakdown lane for a moment. For those unfamiliar with product liability law, a design defect exists when a product is not reasonably safe for its intended purpose – (or, for that matter, any reasonably foreseeable use). This analysis involves a consideration of whether the risks involved in using the product outweigh its utility.

Much of the expert testimony at trial focused on the driver’s conduct behind the wheel. Ford claimed that he “overcorrected” in an emergency situation causing the rollover to occur. Blame the driver – a common defense tactic.

From a procedural standpoint, here is the interesting part. Ford had asserted a comparative negligence defense which it then withdrew at the close of evidence.  Why withdraw a defense that the plaintiff was at fault? I believe Ford’s strategy was an “all-or-nothing” defense; in other words, if comparative negligence was in play, the jury might be tempted to give a percentage award to the plaintiff.

Without that defense, Ford could win outright if the jury found that it was the driver’s conduct, rather than any design defect, that was the proximate cause of the accident.

If you’re confused, my apologies and I’ll try to explain a little better. See, in products liability law, a plaintiff, in order to prevail, must prove both that a design defect existed and that it caused his or her injuries. So Ford was banking on the fact that even if it lost on the first element, it could win on the second and the case would be dismissed against it. It didn’t want the jury to say, well, we feel bad for the plaintiff, and we think both he and Ford share fault, and so we’ll give him a percentage award. 

The strategy paid off for Ford since the jury came back with a verdict in its favor.

But the appeals court said that the trial judge messed up with his instructions to the jury. He should have provided a limiting instruction to the jury that it should determine, first, if the Explorer was defectively designed – independent of the plaintiff’s conduct – meaning, leave the plaintiff out of this! This question has nothing to do with the plaintff and everything to do with the Ford Explorer!

Only if the jury answered in the affirmative could it consider if it was the design defect or the plaintiff’s conduct that was a substantial factor that caused the accident.

But since there was so much focus at trial about the plaintiff’s conduct, the appeals court found that the likelihood existed that the jury incorrectly took it into account when deciding whether or not there was a design defect.  The judge should have given a limiting instruction telling the jury to put the plaintiff and his conduct on the back burner while it decided the defective design question. 

“The defense summation plainly suggested that plaintiff was negligent,” the appeals court wrote. “Given the extent of this evidence, the need for a limiting instruction advising that proof was irrelevant to the issue of design defect was particularly acute.”

And so back the case went to the trial court.

You can read the decision here. It’s titled, Paredes v. Ford Motor Co.