Duran v. Hyundai Motor America, Inc.

• Decision Date: 13 February 2008
• Docket Number: No. M2006-00282-COA-R3-CV,M2006-00282-COA-R3-CV
• Citation: 271 S.W.3d 178
• Parties: Nickie DURAN v. HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA, INC. et al.
• Court: Tennessee Court of Appeals

271 S.W.3d 178

Nickie DURAN v. HYUNDAI MOTOR AMERICA, INC. et al.

No. M2006-00282-COA-R3-CV

Court of Appeals of Tennessee, at Nashville.

October 13, 2006 Session.

February 13, 2008.

Order Denying the Petition for Rehearing February 27, 2008.

Permission to Appeal Denied by Supreme Court August 25, 2008.

Leo Bearman, Jr., Memphis, Tennessee, J. Randolph Bibb, Jr., Nashville, Tennessee, and Ronald S. Range, Jr. and Gary L. Edwards, Johnson City, Tennessee, for the appellants, Hyundai Motor American, Inc., and Hyundai Motor Company.

Wayne A. Ritchie II, Knoxville, Tennessee, and James A. Simmons, Hendersonville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Nickie Duran.

OPINION

WILLIAM C. KOCH, JR., P.J., M.S., delivered the opinion of the court, in which FRANK G. CLEMENT, JR., J., joined. WILLIAM B. CAIN, J., not participating.

This appeal involves a single vehicle accident in which the driver was seriously injured. The driver filed suit against the manufacturer of the automobile in the Circuit Court for Dickson County, alleging that the automobile's exhaust system was dangerously defective and seeking both compensatory and punitive damages. The jury returned a verdict awarding the driver $3,000,000 in compensatory damages and concluding that the driver was entitled to punitive damages. However, the trial court granted a directed verdict on the punitive damage claim and reduced the jury's award of compensatory damages to $2,000,000 to conform to the driver's amended prayer for relief. On this appeal, the manufacturer takes issue with (1) the admissibility of the evidence regarding punitive damages during the driver's case-in-chief, (2) the scope of the cross-examination of one of its expert witnesses, (3) the trial court's delay in directing a verdict on the driver's punitive damage claim, (4) the jury's allocation of fault, (5) the amount of the compensatory damages award, and (6) the award of discretionary costs. The driver takes issue with the dismissal of her punitive damages claim. We have determined that no error was committed during the trial. In addition, we find that the trial court properly directed a verdict on the driver's punitive damages claim and reduced the award for compensatory damages to $2,000,000. We also find that the verdict, as approved by the trial court, is supported by material evidence. Finally, we have determined that the award for discretionary costs must be reduced.

I.

Norma Faye Cook owned and operated a greenhouse nursery business in Clarksville, Tennessee. In February 1991, she purchased a 1988 Hyundai Excel from Terry Harris Motor Company in Clarksville. The car was titled in the name of her daughter, Dawn M. Huizar, and was intended for Ms. Huizar's use and for occasional use in the nursery business.

In the Spring of 1992, Ms. Cook was looking for local suppliers of nursery stock because demand for bedding plants and vegetable plants was high. She had been informed that there were several reliable growers in the Dickson area, and so on May 27, 1992, Ms. Cook drove from Clarksville to Dickson to find some of these suppliers. She was driving the 1988 Hyundai Excel on this trip.

Even though she was generally good with directions, Ms. Cook got lost. As she was slowly driving down the rural two-lane roads looking for the growers, she began to smell an odor in the automobile that reminded her of "being behind an 18-wheeler or a Greyhound bus." Ms. Cook assumed that the odor was coming from the surface of the roadway. While her memory of the events from this point on is spotty, Ms. Cook recalls that she had just crested a hill and was going downhill when everything went blank. After Ms. Cook lost consciousness, the Hyundai Excel continued to roll downhill, eventually left the roadway, and struck a tree while traveling between six and twelve miles per hour.

Ms. Cook did not regain consciousness when the automobile struck the tree, and it is unclear how long she was unconscious. By the time Ms. Cook regained consciousness, the entire front end of the Hyundai Excel, including the dashboard, was on fire. Ms. Cook tried to get out of the car but was unable to release the seatbelt. The flames quickly reached Ms. Cook, severely burning her hands and shoulders. She was eventually able to free herself from the seatbelt and crawled out of the burning car.

A passerby who had noticed the fire from a distance found Ms. Cook standing in a yard covered in black residue. After being informed by another bystander that the emergency crews had been called but had not yet responded, the passerby drove Ms. Cook to Goodlark Hospital in Dickson. While Ms. Cook said very little along the way, she told the passerby that she had difficulty getting her seatbelt unfastened and that she had feared that she was going to burn to death.

The staff at Goodlark Hospital determined that Ms. Cook should be transported by ambulance to Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Ms. Cook had second and third degree burns¹ on both her forearms and hands and second degree burns on her face and ears. Her hair was also singed, and she had soot on her tongue. The pain from her burns required high doses of Demerol. For approximately eighteen months, Ms. Cook was required to wear a compression bandage or prosthesis to reduce the thickening of the skin grafts. Vanderbilt's treatment of Ms. Cook's burns proved to be excellent, and Ms. Cook obtained positive cosmetic results.

As serious and painful as the burns were, Ms. Cook sustained an even more serious, long-term inhalation injury² from breathing the hot air, smoke, and fumes inside the passenger compartment of the burning car. When she arrived at Vanderbilt, Ms. Cook was covered with soot, she was hoarse, and she was expectorating a great deal of soot. The Vanderbilt physicians determined that she had a burn injury in her upper airway, significant injury to her lungs, and elevated levels of carbon monoxide in her blood.³ Ms. Cook's throat and trachea were also swollen because of the burns and the loss of oxygen to the cells caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. Accordingly, Ms. Cook was placed on a ventilator for two to three days, and she continued to cough up black sputum and crusty material for days after the incident.

The inhalation injury caused the tissue in Ms. Cook's lungs to deteriorate and die off, thereby impairing the ability of her lungs to produce the oxygen her body required. Ms. Cook was eventually diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease ("COPD"). Her condition placed her among the most impaired lung disease patients. In addition to the daily use of medication and inhalers, Ms. Cook was required to use an oxygen machine twenty-four hours a day to maintain the oxygen levels in her body.

Ms. Cook was an active and healthy fifty year old prior to May 27, 1992. As a result of her injuries, she became "mostly sedentary." She lived with her elderly mother and her ability to carry heavy things—even a bag of groceries—or to walk up and down stairs was extremely limited. She could walk only short distances without becoming winded, and she was unable to take a shower without sitting down. Her treating physician noted that she was now more susceptible to asthma and respiratory infections and that she would require frequent checkups to monitor her condition. He also predicted that her condition would continue to deteriorate and that she would most likely be confined to a wheelchair within five years.

In 1993, Ms. Cook retained counsel and filed suit against Hyundai Motor America, Inc. and others. This suit was eventually dismissed in 1999. Ms. Cook retained new counsel and, on July 3, 2000, filed a second complaint against Hyundai Motor America, Inc. and Hyundai Motor Company (the "Hyundai defendants") and others in the Circuit Court for Dickson County.⁴ The complaint included claims based on negligence, the Tennessee Products Liability Act, and the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act and sought up to $8,000,000 in compensatory damages and up to $20,000,000 in punitive damages. The Hyundai defendants filed answers denying liability.

The parties engaged in lengthy discovery but filed no dispositive pre-trial motions of any sort. However, one week before the trial was scheduled to begin, they filed numerous motions in limine. The trial court conducted a pre-trial hearing on May 20, 2005. On the day before trial, Ms. Cook filed a motion to decrease her ad damnum.⁵ A jury was empaneled, and the first phase⁶ of the trial commenced on May 24, 2005.

During her case in chief, Ms. Cook presented evidence to support her claim that both her unconsciousness and the fire in the engine compartment of the Hyundai Excel had been caused by a defective reed valve subassembly that is designed to bring fresh air into the exhaust system. She also presented evidence intended to prove (1) that the reed valve subassembly was defectively designed and was in a defective and unreasonably dangerous condition on May 27, 1992; (2) that the Hyundai defendants, through their own internal testing, knew as early as April 1990 that fires were occurring in the engine compartment of 1986-1989 Hyundai Excels and that these fires were caused by defects in the design and the materials in the reed valve subassembly; (3) that the Hyundai defendants decided to issue recall notices only after being pressured by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA"); and (4) that the Hyundai defendants did not mail a recall notice to Ms. Huizar until less than two weeks before Ms. Cook was injured on May 27, 1992. In addition, Ms. Cook presented expert medical testimony that her inhalation injuries and her current respiratory condition were caused by her inhaling the hot fumes and smoke in the burning automobile.

At the close of the plaintiff's proof on May 27, 2005, the Hyundai defendants moved for a directed verdict on two matters. First, they asserted that Ms. Cook had failed to prove that the...