Ford Motor Co. v. Castillo

• Decision Date: 03 October 2014
• Docket Number: No. 13–0158.,13–0158.
• Citation: Ford Motor Co. v. Castillo, 444 S.W.3d 616 (Tex. 2014)
• Parties: FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Petitioner, v. Ezequiel CASTILLO, Individually, Maria De Los Angeles Castillo, Individually and as Next Friend for A.C. and E.C., and Rosa Silvia Martinez, Individually, Respondents.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

444 S.W.3d 616

FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Petitioner

v.Ezequiel CASTILLO, Individually, Maria De Los Angeles Castillo, Individually and as Next Friend for A.C. and E.C., and Rosa Silvia Martinez, Individually, Respondents.

No. 13–0158.

Supreme Court of Texas.

Oct. 3, 2014.

Ernesto Gamez Jr., Law Offices of Ernesto Gamez Jr., PC, Brownsville, TX, for Other interested partyAshley Castillo.

Michael T. Kiesel, Attorney at Law, Dallas, TX, for Other interested partyEzequiel Castillo.

Christopher D. Kratovil, David J. Schenck, Dykema Gossett PLLC, Dallas, TX, Eduardo R. Rodriguez, Jaime A. Saenz, Rodriguez, Colvin, Chaney & Saenz, L.L.P., Brownsville, TX, Michael W. Eady, Ronald D. Wamsted, Thompson, Coe, Cousins & Irons, L.L.P., Austin, TX, for PetitionerFord Motor Company.

Dale S. Kasofsky, Law Offices of Dale S. Kasofsky, Keith C. Livesay, Livesay Law Office, Mark A. Cantu, Robert Schell, Law Office of Mark A. Cantu, McAllen, TX, David M. Gunn, Beck Redden LLP, Houston, TX, Roger W. Hughes, Adams & Graham, L.L.P., Harlingen, TX, for RespondentsEzequiel Castillo.

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

We grant the motion for rehearing, withdraw our opinion and judgment of June 20, 2014, and substitute the following opinion and corresponding judgment.

At issue in this appeal is the legal sufficiency of circumstantial evidence.A jury determined that a settlement agreement was procured by fraud, and the trial court rendered judgment setting the agreement aside.The court of appeals, however, reversed that judgment, holding the circumstantial evidence of fraud in the case legally insufficient.Castillo v. Ford Motor Co.,–––S.W.3d ––––(Tex.App.–Corpus Christi–Edinburg 2013)(mem.op.).We conclude that the circumstantial evidence in this case is legally sufficient and accordingly reverse the court of appeals' judgment and remand to the court of appeals for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.The cause is remanded to that court for consideration of the factual sufficiency of the evidence.

In 2004, Ezequiel Castillo and other occupants of his Ford Explorer sued Ford Motor Company for injuries sustained in a roll-over accident.The plaintiffs asserted design defects in the Explorer's roof and in its handling or stability.The products-liability trial lasted approximately four weeks.The case was submitted to the jury on a Friday, late in the afternoon.The jury charge included separate liability questions on the two alleged design defects.A damages question was conditioned on an affirmative answer to one or both of the liability questions.

Cynthia Cruz Cortez, a member of the jury, was very interested in being selected foreperson, and the other jurors acquiesced.The jury was dismissed for the weekend less than an hour after deliberations began.The jury resumed deliberations the following Monday morning.

Within two hours, eleven of the twelve jurors had decided the first liability question in Ford's favor.Cortez was the only juror voting against Ford, but she eventually relented, making the first question a unanimous decision.By the end of Monday's deliberations, eight jurors had decided the second question in Ford's favor.Cortez was one of two jurors who voted against Ford, and two jurors remained undecided.

On Tuesday morning, Cortez failed to return for deliberations.According to other jurors and trial counsel for Ford, Presiding Judge Abel C. Limas¹ informed everybody that Cortez had been in the hospital all night with a sick child.Judge Limas dismissed the jurors for the day and announced that deliberations would resume the following morning.

After the recess was announced, Mark Cantu, one of Castillo's attorneys, called Pete Tassie, Ford's managing counsel, in Michigan to discuss settlement.The two had discussed settlement over several months, but Cantu had refused to budge from his $15 million demand, which Tassie viewed as unreasonable.This day, however, Cantu asked for $8 million to settle, and later reduced his demand to $4 million.Tassie countered with an offer of $1 million.By the end of the day, the parties were less than $500,000 apart, with Cantu demanding $1.96 million, and Tassie willing to pay $1.5 million.

Tassie recalled from the lengthy negotiations that Cantu repeatedly stated that his demand would increase to $3 million if the jury were to send a note about damages.Tassie, who had ten years of experience negotiating for Ford, including several prior dealings with Cantu, found Cantu's comment odd, not only as to its frequency, but also its specificity.Tassie was accustomed to opposing negotiators stating generally that their demands would increase if certain things were to happen, but had never heard such a specific contingency, let alone one that was repeated several times.At the conclusion of the day's negotiations, Cantu told Tassie he would talk to the judge in the morning and that he could expect the judge to put some pressure on him to settle the case.

The next morning, Tassie called Ford's trial counsel, Eduardo Rodriguez, to update him on the significant progress that had been made in negotiations.Tassie, however, did not hear from the judge or Cantu before the jury began deliberating the next morning.Rodriguez informed Tassie that Cantu was not at the courthouse.Tassie thought this was odd because Cantu had not missed a day during the four week trial.He tried to reach Cantu by phone but was unsuccessful.

About 9 a.m., the jury sent a note to the judge asking for clarification on the burden of proof.Then, about 10:30 a.m., the second note of the day was sent to the judge, inquiring: “What is the maximum amount that can be awarded?”Rodriguez immediately called Tassie in Michigan, and, without hesitation, Tassie obtained authority from his supervisor to settle the case for $3 million—the amount Cantu had said the day before he would demand if the jury were to ask a question about damages.About this same time, Cantu, who had been unavailable all morning, called Tassie.Cantu initially stated that his demand should be $10 or $15 million, but quickly agreed to settle the case for $3 million.

Tassie called Rodriguez to tell him the case had settled, and, because of the disturbing note, asked Rodriguez to speak with members of the jury.Ford's attorneys were able to talk to eleven of the jurors, but Cortez left the courthouse without speaking to them.Discussing the case with the other jurors, Ford learned that the jury had not been discussing damages before the settlement, and did not know that Cortez had sent the damages note to the judge.Ford subsequently tried to obtain a statement from Cortez but was not successful.Ford did obtain affidavits from most of the other jurors, who repeated what they told Ford on the day the case settled.After completing its investigation, Ford refused to pay the $3 million to Castillo, who then sued Ford for breach of contract.

In its defense to the settlement, Ford asserted fraudulent inducement, unilateral mistake, and mutual mistake.However, Judge Limas prohibited Ford from conducting discovery or offering evidence of the jury's deliberations in the products-liability trial, including the signed affidavits from the jurors.Judge Limas subsequently granted summary judgment, and the court of appeals affirmed.Ford Motor Co. v. Castillo,200 S.W.3d 217(Tex.App.-Corpus Christi–Edinburg 2006, pet. granted).This Court reversed and remanded to permit Ford to conduct discovery and offer evidence from the jurors in the products-liability suit, because, inter alia, the circumstantial evidence indicated outside influence.Ford Motor Co. v. Castillo,279 S.W.3d 656, 666(Tex.2009)(“Discovery involving jurors will not be appropriate in most cases, but in this case there was more than just a suspicion that something suspect occurred—there was some circumstantial evidence that it did.”).

On remand, a new jury heard testimony from, among others, Tassie, Cantu, Rodriguez, and most of the jurors from the products-liability trial, including Cortez.Several of the jurors testified that Cortez kept trying to bring up the damages issue on her own, and sent the note against their specific requests that she not do so.These jurors also testified that all other notes were sent by unanimous agreement.One juror testified that on the morning the case settled—after the day-long recess caused by Cortez's absence—Cortez arrived in a “very happy, very upbeat” mood, and told the other jurors, “This will be settled today.”

Unlike the other jurors who testified, Cortez could not recall any of the pertinent details of the trial or the jury deliberations.Notably, Cortez could not recall why she sent the note in question, why exactly she did not show up for the second full day of deliberations, or why she had left the courtroom so quickly after the settlement was announced.Cortez also could not recall her cell phone number or carrier at the time, but signed a release permitting Ford to search for all cell-phone records registered to Cortez during the time of the products-liability trial, using her name, address, and date of birth.After denying that she spoke with any attorneys during the trial, Cortez was asked to explain a phone call on September 21, 2004 to the purported private cell phone of attorney and State Representative Jim Solis.²Initially, Cortez explained that her husband probably made the call.When other evidence made that explanation unlikely,³she speculated that the phone records were those of another Cynthia Cortez.

After hearing all of the evidence, the jury found the settlement agreement invalid because of fraudulent inducement and mutual mistake.The trial court rendered a take-nothing judgment and Castillo appealed.The court of appeals reversed the judgment, concluding that the evidence was legally insufficient to support a jury verdict.444 S.W.3d at 621.

A legal sufficiency challenge will be sustained when the record confirms either: (a) a complete absence of a vital...