Chastain v. General Motors Corp.

• Decision Date: 10 March 2003
• Docket Number: Docket No. 222502.
• Citation: 657 N.W.2d 804,254 Mich. App. 576
• Parties: Emmett CHASTAIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Court of Appeal of Michigan — District of US

657 N.W.2d 804

254 Mich. App. 576

Emmett CHASTAIN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellee.

Docket No. 222502.

Court of Appeals of Michigan.

Submitted November 19, 2002, at Detroit.

Decided December 27, 2002, at 9:20 a.m.

Released for Publication March 10, 2003.

Granzotto & Nicita, P.C. (by Mark Granzotto) and Goodman, Lister & Peters, P.C. (by Darrel Peters), Detroit, for the plaintiff.

Bowman and Brooke LLP (by Frank Nizio, Thomas P. Branigan, Terrence E. Haggerty, and Kandace J. Jones), Detroit, for the defendant.

Before: WILDER, P.J., and HOOD and SAWYER, JJ.

WILDER, P.J.

This case is before this Court on remand from our Supreme Court, which vacated this Court's judgment and directed reconsideration and clarification of a specific portion of our prior opinion¹ in lieu of granting leave to appeal. 467 Mich. 888, 654 N.W.2d 326 (2002). On reconsideration, we affirm.

I. Facts and Proceedings

A. The Accident

On March 25, 1991, plaintiff Emmett Chastain, an employee of Cashman Equipment Company (Cashman), located in Elko, Nevada, was given two boxes of parts to deliver to another Cashman employee. That employee worked out of Cashman's Round Mountain Gold Mine Office. As was standard with such deliveries, plaintiff was to meet the Round Mountain employee in Eureka, Nevada,² at which time the boxes would be given to the Round Mountain employee. In order to reach Eureka, plaintiff was provided with a company-owned 1988 Chevrolet C/K pickup truck, one of several trucks used for deliveries.

Plaintiff testified that, before beginning the trip, he gave the truck a cursory look to "make sure [the] tires were inflated," that the gauges looked good, and that "everything" looked all right with the truck. Plaintiff also testified that he went to a gasoline station in order to "fill up" the truck, put his seat belt on, and began the trip. In order to reach Eureka, plaintiff began driving south on State Highway 278 at a speed of sixty miles an hour. At the time plaintiff began the trip, the weather was clear and dry. However, sometime during the trip it began to snow, causing plaintiff to slow to a speed of approximately fifty miles an hour. Shortly thereafter, plaintiff lost control of the truck. According to plaintiff, the truck began to slide toward the opposite lane of traffic, then began traveling backwards, eventually going off the road, where it hit a roadway marker and a shallow embankment, rolled over, and began hitting things in a "very violent" manner. The plaintiff also testified that he was ejected from the truck through the driver's side window, landing on the ground on his back. Plaintiff found himself unable to move his legs and seek assistance. He remained on the side of the highway until he was discovered by Jerry Sestanovich, a local rancher.

After being on the scene for about ten minutes, Sestanovich was able to stop a passing truck and ask the driver to call for help. Approximately ten minutes later, officers from the Lander County Sheriff's Department and the Eureka County Sheriff's Department, as well as emergency medical personnel, arrived at the scene. It is undisputed that upon their arrival, plaintiff, either voluntarily or in response to questions asked of him, informed them that he had been wearing his seat belt and therefore was confused and concerned about how he ended up outside the truck.

B. Plaintiff's Injuries

Plaintiff was treated at the scene by, among others, Dr. Rod Phillips. Dr. Phillips noticed that while plaintiff appeared to be conscious and alert, he was complaining of pain in his neck and abdomen and that his legs were cold and numb. Dr. Phillips also noticed that plaintiff was ashen in color, having trouble breathing, spitting blood, and had a large contusion on his back between his T-10 and T-12 vertebrae. On the basis of these symptoms and complaints, Dr. Phillips believed that plaintiff probably suffered a spinal cord injury. Accordingly, after plaintiff was stabilized, his neck and back were immobilized and he was transported by ambulance to the Eureka Airport, where he was then taken by plane to the Washoe Medical Center. At the Washoe Medical Center, Dr. Phillips' initial assessment was proved to be correct—plaintiff had fractured his spine between the T-11 and T-12 vertebrae. Plaintiff then underwent a surgical procedure known as a bilateral fusion in which Harrington Rods were inserted in order to stabilize his spine. Despite these medical efforts, plaintiff was rendered a paraplegic, being unable to use his legs or feel any sensation below his waist. In addition to the loss of use of his legs, plaintiff, who was twenty-three years old at the time of the accident, was left sexually dysfunctional. He also has a neurogenic bladder,³ cardiovascular problems, and decubitus ulcers. As a result, plaintiff requires attendant care to assist him with his daily routine.

C. Accident Investigation

The official accident investigation was conducted by Officer John Schweble of the Nevada Highway Patrol, who arrived at the scene approximately 2 1/2 hours following the accident. At that point, plaintiff had been taken to the hospital and no one was present at the scene.⁴ Officer Schweble examined the accident scene and truck, took photographs and measurements, and drew a diagram. After returning to Eureka, he also conducted interviews with people who came to the aid of plaintiff immediately after the accident.

In examining the truck, Officer Schweble determined that the lack of tread on the rear tires approached illegal levels. Officer Schweble also noted, on the basis of the witness statement of Sestanovich, that plaintiff was driving approximately fifty miles an hour and that the road conditions were snowy and icy at the time of the accident.⁵ Therefore, Officer Schweble concluded, on the basis of the conditions of both the weather and the tires, that plaintiff was driving at an unsafe speed, causing the truck to hydroplane and the plaintiff to lose control. He also concluded, and was permitted to testify at trial, that plaintiff was not wearing his seat belt at the time of the accident. Officer Schweble reached this conclusion even though he never interviewed plaintiff, never touched, examined, or tested the seat belt, and had been informed by Officer Mark Salopek, of the Eureka County Sheriff's Department, that plaintiff told him and others at the scene that he was wearing the seat belt at the time of the accident.

D. The Complaint, Discovery Requests, and Trial

In September 1993, plaintiff filed the instant complaint against defendant and Allied-Signal, Inc.⁶ Specifically, plaintiff's complaint alleged that the seat belt, known as a Joint Development Company (JDC) buckle, was defective and that because of this defect, the buckle, instead of restraining him, released either before or after the accident, causing him to be ejected from the truck. Plaintiff contended that the buckle released either because it was "false latched"⁷ or because it was subject to inertial release.⁸ Before trial, on March 30, 1998, more than three years after the end of discovery, plaintiff filed a motion to compel discovery. That motion requested production of the following materials: (1) crash and sled tests conducted by General Motors in which the JDC buckle was found unlatched at the conclusion of the tests; (2) General Motors test incident reports (TIRS) that noted an unlatching problem with the JDC buckle, especially TIRS for post-1993 C/K vehicles; (3) over 150 consumer reports of problems related to the JDC buckle; (4) documents pertaining to preliminary evaluations, engineering analyses, and the recall of some C/K trucks, including documents relating to the discovery of the conditions leading to the recall; and (5) GM's "lawsuit list."

Plaintiff's motion was heard on April 13, 1998. However, in lieu of deciding the issue, the trial court assigned the case to another judge in the hopes that it could be settled. After settlement proved to be impossible, the motion was again heard by the trial court. Because the trial court believed that the requested information was irrelevant, the request was denied.⁹ Thus, the case was scheduled for trial.

At trial, plaintiff called, among numerous witnesses, an engineering expert who testified that the seat belt was defectively manufactured and that, as a result of this defect, the seat belt was more likely to release because of either "false latch" or inertial release. Specifically, plaintiff's expert, Stephen R. Syson, testified that a particular part of the seat belt latch, known as the banana slot or "L" shaped space is to have a maximum radius of twotenths of a millimeter and that the banana slot of the seat belt on the driver's side of plaintiff's truck, however, had a radius of approximately one millimeter. Therefore, according to plaintiff's expert, because the radius of the banana slot was about five times larger than it should have been, the seat belt had a higher probability of being false latched or coming unlatched because of inertial release.

Syson also testified that he was able to false latch the seat belts in the truck driven by plaintiff about one out of three times he attempted to do so.¹⁰ Syson went on to testify that according to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 209, if a seat belt is false latched it is supposed to unlatch whenever the force upon it is five pounds or less; however, the seat belts in plaintiff's truck were, according to Syson's tests and testimony, able to withstand anywhere from six to over fifty pounds of force before the tongue would separate from the buckle. Syson indicated during his testimony that this was unsafe because it meant that a falsely latched seat belt could remain buckled until the time someone is involved in an accident, only then to release during the accident, causing injury to the occupant.

In contrast to plaintiff's theory, defendant sought...