Griffin v. General Motors Corp.

• Citation: 403 N.E.2d 402,380 Mass. 362,16 A.L.R.4th 579
• Parties: , 16 A.L.R.4th 579 Eileen GRIFFIN v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.
• Decision Date: 11 April 1980
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

Page 402

403 N.E.2d 402

380 Mass. 362, 16 A.L.R.4th 579

Eileen GRIFFIN v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Middlesex.

Argued Jan. 7, 1980.

Decided April 11, 1980.

Charles F. Barrett, Boston (Patrick F. Brady, Boston, with him), for defendant.

Paul R. Sugarman, Boston (W. Thomas Smith, Boston, with him), for plaintiff.

Before QUIRICO, BRAUCHER, KAPLAN, LIACOS, and ABRAMS, JJ.

BRAUCHER, Justice.

The plaintiff's automobile, manufactured by the defendant, caught fire while she was driving it, and she was severely burned. On a theory of negligent design, a jury has awarded her $1,000,000 in damages, and judgment has been entered for that amount plus $574,500 in statutory interest. The defendant's appeal presents evidentiary issues, issues with respect to the instructions to the jury, and a claim that the damages awarded are excessive. The judge refused to instruct the jury that an award of damages would be exempt from income taxation, and the plaintiff applied for direct appellate review, asserting that the refusal presented an issue of first impression in the Commonwealth. We allowed the application, and we now affirm the judgment.

The plaintiff bought the automobile, a 1969 Buick Skylark convertible, in June, 1969. The fire occurred July 11, 1970, and the plaintiff entered her civil action February 1, 1971, against the defendant and two Buick dealers. The case was tried in February, 1979, and verdicts were directed in favor of the two codefendants.

The plaintiff testified that she was traveling at forty to forty-five miles an hour with the convertible top and windows closed. The two upper fresh air vents on the dashboard were open; the two lower vents under the dashboard were closed. She decided to smoke a cigarette, reached into her pocketbook, and took out a cigarette and her butane lighter. With her left hand she opened the left lower air vent, and immediately smelled gasoline. At almost the same time she activated her lighter, and the car was immediately engulfed in flames. In ten to fifteen seconds she stopped the car, opened the door and fell out. A passerby took her to a hospital.

The plaintiff's experts testified that the negligent design of the hood and fresh air system permitted fumes from a gasoline leak in the engine compartment to enter the passenger compartment, and that those fumes were ignited when the plaintiff activated her lighter. The resulting flames flashed back to the source of the fumes in the engine compartment and then burned with high intensity through the vent she had opened. The defendant's expert testified that gasoline fumes could not travel from the engine compartment into the passenger compartment, and that the fire was caused by butane fumes rather than gasoline fumes and was fed by something in the passenger compartment.

1. Fuel leak testimony. In his opening statement, the plaintiff's counsel described three alleged design defects that might have caused a fuel leak. Over the defendant's objection, one of the plaintiff's experts gave detailed testimony as to each of the three. The defendant's motions to strike that testimony were denied. After the close of evidence, the plaintiff's counsel informed the judge at a lobby conference that he would not argue to the jury the defendant's negligence with respect to a fuel leak. The judge then instructed the jury that "it appears now that the single charge of negligent design or manufacture that will be argued to you tomorrow morning is in the design and construction of the hood and the air system, the fresh air system; that the other things you heard about may be argued to you as a possible source of flames, but the focus of fault will be on the hood and the fresh air system, and their design combination, juxtaposition, inter-relationship."

The defendant requested a charge that the jury could not base a finding for the plaintiff on the defendant's alleged negligence causing a gasoline leak. The judge did not give the requested charge. Instead, he told the jury the following: "Plaintiff has not argued that the design or construction of the fuel system was negligence. It comes in only as a possible explanation for the source of the fire. The sole ground of negligence that the plaintiff is charging is the design and/or construction of the hood and the fresh air system."

There was no error. The defendant's motion to strike the expert testimony was overbroad, since it was relevant, as the judge pointed out, to supply possible explanations for the fuel leak and the flames. See Bryer v. P. S. Thorsen Co. of Mass., 327 Mass. 684, 687, 100 N.E.2d 684 (1951). The instructions given by the judge covered the substance of the defendant's request. See Commonwealth v. Aronson, 330 Mass. 453, 458, 115 N.E.2d 362 (1953).

2. The ammonia test. The plaintiff's experts conducted a test of a 1969 Buick Skylark in preparation for trial. Household ammonia was poured on top of the air filter cover, and the vehicle was accelerated to thirty miles an hour with windows closed, heater and fan off, and air vents closed. At thirty miles an hour, the upper vents were opened, and one of the experts detected only a faint odor of ammonia. The vehicle was then accelerated to forty-five miles an hour, and the lower vent was opened. The same expert then detected a very strong odor of ammonia, and concluded that the atmosphere from under the hood did get into the driver's compartment.

When evidence of the test was first offered, the judge excluded it. Later, however, the defendant's expert testified that it was not possible for fumes from the engine compartment to enter the fresh air system. He also testified to a somewhat similar test conducted by him, using gasoline instead of ammonia. The judge then admitted evidence of the ammonia test by way of rebuttal, over the defendant's objection that the test conditions were not sufficiently similar to the litigated happening to be of assistance to the jury.

Evidence of the ammonia test was relevant to contradict the defendant's theory that it was not possible for fumes from the engine compartment to enter the passenger compartment. See McCarthy v. Curry, 240 Mass. 442, 444, 134 N.E. 339 (1922). Whether testimony as to experiments shall be admitted must be largely left to the discretion of the trial judge, and that discretion will not be interfered with unless in its exercise he clearly appears to be wrong. The determination whether the conditions were sufficiently similar to make the experiment of any value in aiding the jury is a matter resting in the sound discretion of the judge. Commonwealth v. Makarewicz, 333 Mass. 575, 592-593, 132 N.E.2d 294 (1956), and cases cited. There is no dispute that the test vehicle was similar to the plaintiff's, and the plaintiff's expert testified that the use of ammonia instead of gasoline did not affect the validity of the test. There was no abuse of discretion.

3. Future earning capacity. The judge instructed the jury that the plaintiff was "entitled to her past and future impaired earning capacity." The defendant objected to that instruction and to the judge's refusal to instruct the jury that there was no evidence of any future impairment. There was no error.

The plaintiff was unable to work from July 12, 1970, to March 29, 1971. Since then, she testified, she has been employed as a legal secretary, and has been able to do her work. Her doctor testified that she had a loss of function of 45% in her left hand, 25% in her right hand, and 30% in her knee joints, and that she suffered persistent pain in her fingers and knees during cold weather, with particular trouble with cracks and fissures in the skin over the joints and the backs of her hands. In his opinion, there was a probability of the development of a traumatic form of arthritis in some or all of these joints.

The assessment of damages for impairment of earning capacity rests largely on the common knowledge of the jury, sometimes with little aid from evidence. Doherty v. Ruiz, 302 Mass. 145, 147, 18 N.E.2d 542 (1939); Cross v. Sharaffa, 281 Mass. 329, 331-332, 183 N.E. 838 (1933). The evidence warranted an inference that the plaintiff's loss of function would increase in the future, and that her earning capacity would be diminished. As the judge said to counsel, "I think it is susceptible of common knowledge that with the massive scars that she has that her future opportunities for employment are going to be impaired."

4. Interest. The judge instructed the jury, "Damages for the future should be reduced to present value because you know that if you need a hundred dollars a year from now, you don't have to put a hundred dollars in the bank, or any other investment, to have it worth that a year from now and so on into the future." He also gave the following instruction: "You should not concern yourself with interest for any past damages because the clerk calculates those and adds those to any award." The defendant objected that the jury were left "with the impression that they may be able to add, illogical though it may seem, interest on any future damages which they may award." The judge did not give the instruction requested by the defendant, that "you are not to include any amount for interest."

The governing statute is unequivocal in requiring that the clerk add interest on the entire amount of the verdict. G.L. c. 231, § 6B. Carey v. General Motors Corp., --- Mass. ---, --- ^a, 387 N.E.2d 583 (1979). Thus the instruction given was incomplete in stating that the clerk adds interest "for any past damages." But the jury could not have been misled; their verdict was entire and did not identify any sum for "past damages" or for future loss. The instruction was correct as to their duty with respect to interest as far as it went. We do not see any substantial risk that the jury, after reducing future loss to its present value, took the "illogical" course of adding...