Brooks v. Chrysler Corp., s. 84-5738
| Decision Date | 28 March 1986 |
| Docket Number | Nos. 84-5738,84-5753,s. 84-5738 |
| Citation | 786 F.2d 1191,252 U.S.App. D.C. 29 |
| Parties | , 20 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 251, Prod.Liab.Rep.(CCH)P 10,954 Harriet BROOKS, et al., Appellants, v. CHRYSLER CORPORATION. Harriet BROOKS, et al. v. CHRYSLER CORPORATION, Appellant. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Appeals from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Civil Action No. 83-02307).
Charles C. Parsons, Washington, D.C., for appellants in No. 84-5738 and cross-appellees in No. 84-5753.
James A. Hourihan, with whom David A. Kikel, Washington, D.C., was on brief, for appellee in No. 84-5738 and cross-appellant in No. 84-5753.
Before WALD and MIKVA, Circuit Judges, and SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. *
In this products liability case, the plaintiffs appeal from the district court's action in directing a verdict for the defendant. More specifically, plaintiffs contend the trial judge erred in excluding five proffered exhibits on the grounds of hearsay, irrelevancy, and unfair prejudice. We affirm.
On July 16, 1982 Linda Emerson, accompanied by Jerome McNair, was driving north along Alabama Avenue, S.E., in the District of Columbia in her 1979 Chrysler LeBaron. Upon approaching the intersection of Alabama Avenue and Irving Place, S.E., the car pulled abruptly to the right and crashed into a telephone pole, injuring both Emerson and McNair. Emerson later died from the injuries she sustained during the crash.
The plaintiffs in this action--Harriet Brooks (the administratrix of Emerson's estate)--and McNair--claim that the car accident was caused by brake piston seizure of the right front wheel. Brake piston seizure occurs when, after the driver has released the brake pedal, the piston remains in contact with the wheel rotor, thereby preventing rotation of the wheel on the axle. The car will then pull in the direction of the non-rotating wheel. The plaintiffs further claim that the alleged brake piston seizure in the 1979 LeBaron resulted from defectively designed brakes. The alleged defect is the "lip-in" dustboot which, according to the plaintiffs, permits corrosive material to enter the caliper bore and retard piston retraction during and after braking.
In support of their theory that the lip-in dust-boot constituted a design defect and was the cause of the accident and that Chrysler knew about the defect but failed to warn customers or to correct the defect, the plaintiffs intended to present to the jury five exhibits (Exhibits 16A, 16B, 17, 26, and 34) relating to a 1978-80 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, ("HSA"), investigation into brake piston seizure in 1976-80 Chrysler vehicles as evidence of "prior occurrences of piston seizure under substantially similar circumstances." Plaintiffs' Pretrial Brief at 16. Exhibit 17 consisted of 330 consumer complaints. Most of these complaints were in the form of questionnaires that HSA mailed to Chrysler car owners pursuant to its investigation of the brake piston seizure problem. 1 In the questionnaires, the owners indentified the year, make, and model of their Chrysler cars, the mileage, and the composition of the steering and braking systems; the owners also detailed their complaints about problems with the vehicle and how those problems interfered with their operation of the car. Exhibit 34 consisted of 98 questionnaires selected from Exhibit 17 by the plaintiffs' expert witness, Dr. James A. Kirk.
Exhibits 16A and 16B were documents obtained from HSA files. Exhibit 16A was comprised of correspondence between HSA and Chrysler regarding the problem of brake piston seizure. Exhibit 16B consisted of two internal memoranda written by HSA's safety defects engineer in which he described the investigation and the consumer complaints.
Exhibit 26 is Chrysler's internal file on the HSA investigation. In addition to the correspondence contained in Exhibit 16A, Exhibit 26 also contained correspondence with the Canadian government's department of transportation, and internal Chrysler memoranda detailing Chrysler's own investigation into the problem and its strategy to deal with it.
Chrysler moved seeking in limine to exclude all five exhibits. It argued that the five exhibits were inadmissible because they were hearsay and because the plaintiffs had not shown that they represented instances of substantially similar prior occurrences; that even if they did represent such instances, they were inadmissible under Fed.R.Evid. 403 because whatever minimal probative value they had was substantially outweighed by the risk of undue prejudice. Chrysler added that Exhibits 16A and 26 were inadmissible because they did not constitute admissions within the meaning of Fed.R.Evid. 801(d)(2) and that Exhibit 16B was inadmissible because it is not a public record within the meaning of Fed.R.Evid. 803(8)(C). Finally Chrysler argued that, even if Exhibit 16B were a public record, it should be excluded because the information forming the basis for the two memoranda was inherently unreliable. The plaintiffs in turn filed their own motion in limine seeking to exclude all references to the fact that Emerson and McNair were not wearing their seatbelts at the time of the accident.
Essentially agreeing with all of Chrysler's arguments, the district judge granted Chrysler's motion in full. 2 The district judge, however, offered to reconsider his ruling with respect to several of the questionnaires contained in Exhibit 34 if the plaintiffs would have the owners submitting those questionnaires testify. He further ruled that the plaintiffs' expert, Dr. Kirk, could not rely on any of these exhibits when testifying, but he offered to reconsider this ruling when Dr. Kirk was examined on voir dire. The district judge also granted the plaintiffs' motion to exclude all references to Emerson's and McNair's failure to use seatbelts.
After presenting two witnesses who testified as to the chain of custody of the car after the accident, the plaintiffs' counsel rested the case apparently because he believed that the judge's evidentiary rulings had severely undermined his case and because Dr. Kirk had indicated that he could not testify that there was a design defect if he could not rely on the excluded exhibits. 3 Chrysler moved for a directed verdict, which the district judge granted after discussing with the plaintiffs individually the nature of his rulings and the effect of their counsel's action on Chrysler's settlement offer. The plaintiffs' appeal is based on the trial judge's evidentiary rulings; Chrysler cross-appeals from the order excluding evidence of failure to use seatbelts.
At the hearing held on the parties' motion in limine, Chrysler's primary argument in support of exclusion of all five exhibits was that they did not represent examples of substantially similar prior occurrences because the 1978-80 HSA investigation related to a distinct cause of brake piston seizure. According to Chrysler, the investigation revealed only that the lip-in dust-boot was difficult to install properly in its groove or that it was easily pulled out of groove by brake friction. The out-of-groove dust-boot resulting from misinstallation or friction permitted water and other materials from the road (e.g., salt) to seep into the caliper bore causing corrosion on the side of the caliper bore on the land area between the dust-boot and the hydraulic seal. This corrosion could ultimately cause the piston to retard during contraction. Chrysler argued that the exhibits generated by the investigation were therefore irrelevant, see Fed.R.Evid. 401, because the plaintiffs' claim was that the lip-in dust-boot was defective per se in that it failed to prevent corrosive materials from seeping into the bottom of the caliper bore even when it was properly seated in its groove.
Chrysler further argued that the exhibits were properly excludable under Rule 403 4 because they were minimally probative on the issue of whether the Emerson vehicle suffered from the particular design defect alleged by the plaintiffs and whether the accident was caused by this defect, and the evidence was likely to be unfairly prejudicial to Chrysler and confusing to the jury.
In support of their claim that the exhibits represented substantially similar prior occurrences and were probative of the central issues in this case, the plaintiffs noted that the subject of the HSA study was 1976-1980 model Chrysler automobiles (including the LeBaron model) fitted with the lip-in style dust-boot mounted on a 2.75-inch-diameter sliding plastic piston and that the Emerson vehicle was a 1979 Chrysler LeBaron fitted with that particular dust-boot. They further argued that the HSA study showed that brake piston seizure was caused by corrosion forming on the caliper bore which caused the vehicle to pull sharply in the direction of the "frozen" wheel. In the instant case, their examination of the Emerson LeBaron completed shortly after the accident revealed that there was corrosion on the bottom of the caliper bore and that the right front wheel was "frozen" on its axle. In addition, the plaintiffs asserted that their witnesses would testify that the Emerson LeBaron pulled sharply to the right--the direction of the "frozen" wheel--shortly before smashing into the telephone pole.
In response to Chrysler's argument that the HSA study was narrowly confined to the problem of out-of-groove dust-boots, the plaintiffs relied on several extracts from the exhibits which the plaintiffs argued demonstrated that the HSA investigation was concerned with piston seizure resulting from a defectively-designed dust-boot that permitted corrosive products to bypass even a properly-seated dust-boot. The first such extraction was a warranty summary drawn from Chrysler's May 8, 1979 letter (contained in...
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