Hall v. General Motors Corp., 79-2106

• Decision Date: 24 December 1980
• Docket Number: No. 79-2106,79-2106
• Citation: 647 F.2d 175,207 U.S. App. D.C. 350
• Parties: , 7 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1000 Georgia HALL and Edward Hall, Appellees, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Buick Division, Appellant, Larry Buick, Incorporated.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

Page 175

647 F.2d 175

207 U.S.App.D.C. 350, 7 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 1000

Georgia HALL and Edward Hall, Appellees, v. GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION, Buick Division, Appellant Larry Buick, Incorporated.

No. 79-2106.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued Sept. 23, 1980.

Decided Dec. 24, 1980.

Harold Ungar, Washington, D. C., with whom Aubrey M. Daniel, III and Robert P. Watkins, Washington, D. C., were on brief, for appellant.

Solomon L. Margolis, Washington, D. C., with whom Allan L. Kamerow, Stanley H. Kamerow, Washington, D. C., and Gerald I. Holtz, Rockville, Md., were on brief, for appellees.

Before ROBB, WALD and GINSBURG, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GINSBURG.

GINSBURG, Circuit Judge:

On a clear September afternoon in 1975, Georgia Hall had a tragic accident. Her five-month old Buick Electra left Suitland Parkway in the District of Columbia and careened across a grassy field until it collided with a tree. The accident left Mrs. Hall a quadriplegic.

Mrs. Hall and her husband, invoking federal jurisdiction based on diversity of citizenship, commenced this damage action against the manufacturer, General Motors Corporation ("GM"), and the dealer, Larry Buick, Inc. Prior to trial, the plaintiffs entered into a settlement with the dealer, pursuant to which Mrs. Hall received $700,000, and her husband, $50,000. In accordance with the settlement, plaintiffs' claims against Larry Buick and Larry Buick's cross-claim against GM were dismissed with prejudice. ¹

A bifurcated jury trial was held at which United States District Judge June L. Green presided. On May 2, 1979, the jury returned a verdict against GM on the issue of liability. On May 31, the jury awarded damages in the amount of $5 million for Mrs. Hall, and $1.5 million for her husband. On GM's motion, Judge Green ordered and the plaintiffs accepted a remittitur reducing Mr. Hall's award (for loss of consortium) to $500,000. Judge Green denied GM's motion to reduce the damage awards by 50% because of the Halls' pre-trial settlement with the co-defendant Larry Buick, Inc. She did, however, reduce the awards by the amounts the Halls had received pursuant to the settlement. The total judgment, as adjusted, is therefore $4.75 million $4.3 million for Georgia Hall and $450,000 for her husband. ²

In this appeal, GM seeks reversal or modification of the District Court's judgment on three principal grounds. First, GM asserts that the charge erroneously permitted the jury to find liability based on an unidentified defect in the Buick. The plaintiffs' evidence identified only the drive shaft as defective, GM points out. Since plaintiffs did not attempt to prove a causative defect in any part of the vehicle other than the drive shaft, GM claims entitlement to an instruction tying liability to a finding that the drive shaft was defective. Second, GM challenges several rulings made in the course of trial. Third, GM maintains that the Halls' settlement with the co-defendant Larry Buick, Inc., requires reduction of the judgment against GM by 50%.

We conclude that Judge Green, adhering to this court's decision in Stewart v. Ford Motor Co., 553 F.2d 130 (D.C.Cir.1977), properly instructed the jury; that her rulings at trial yielded no reversible error; and that she properly denied GM's motion for a 50% reduction in the judgment. We therefore affirm.

I. Facts

On September 29, 1975, in full daylight, Georgia Hall was driving alone in her 1975 Buick, purchased some five months earlier. She was in the right-hand, eastbound lane on Suitland Parkway, maintaining a speed of 40-45 miles per hour along the dry, smooth road. As GM described the accident, the car veered to the right, crossed the shoulder into a field of grass, then traveled across an elevated exit-entrance ramp into a wooded area where it hit a tree that stood over 700 feet from the road. When the car crossed the ramp, Mrs. Hall was thrown from behind the wheel. Witnesses found her lying across the front seat with her foot "hooked up" between the accelerator and the brake pedal. She had suffered a broken neck, resulting in permanent quadriplegia.

Mrs. Hall's testimony indicated that, at the time of the accident, she was a healthy woman, who did not drink or take drugs. She was an experienced driver and, when the fateful episode occurred, she was traveling on a familiar road maintaining, according to her testimony, a moderate speed. She said she heard a loud explosion while the car was on the road, followed by vibrations and popping. As the car surged off the road, she claimed that she mashed continuously on the brakes but the car would not stop. She had lost control.

The Halls presented evidence of their multiple complaints about the car, complaints they reported repeatedly to the dealer, Larry Buick, Inc. Surging, vibrations, and other malfunctions existed, the Halls said, from the time Mrs. Hall purchased the car until the time of the accident. Despite inspections and servicing by the dealer, no correction was accomplished.

The car's drive shaft system was found after the accident to have been destroyed. At trial, the Halls attempted to show that a defect in the shaft had caused the accident. GM, on the other hand, maintained that the destroyed drive shaft was the result of the accident, not its cause. The cause, GM suggested, was Mrs. Hall's momentary inattention to the road, followed by panic, which led her to apply the accelerator instead of the brake. ³

Expert testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs accounted for the accident roughly as follows. A defective joint in the drive shaft exploded on the highway, causing the rear of the shaft, with part of the joint still attached, to drop to the road, still spinning rapidly. The force of the contact with the road produced a forward reaction, upward and to the right, which pushed the drive shaft tube into the rear of the transmission housing with sufficient force to raise the car off its suspension and drive it from the road. This testimony also attributed the intermittent vibrations, about which the Halls had complained prior to the accident, to defects in the rear portion of the drive shaft.

GM, contrarily, presented evidence to support its contention that the drive shaft did not disintegrate until the car smashed into the ground after traversing the elevated exit-entrance ramp. In particular, GM showed that the seventeen separate parts of the shaft found after the accident were all in the immediate vicinity of the area where the violent ground impact had occurred. GM further pointed out that the police accident investigator, called to the scene immediately after the accident, found no scratches or stains on the road that could be associated with the Halls' theory of the accident. In addition, GM presented a wealth of expert testimony supporting its position that Mrs. Hall's Buick was not defective in any material respect.

II. The Stewart Instruction

Judge Green gave the following instruction to the jury regarding GM's liability: ⁴

(P)laintiffs need not prove a specific defect (in the Buick).

It is sufficient if you find from the evidence that the motor vehicle in question went out of control causing the accident as a result of some mechanical failure due to an obvious or hidden defect in the car which existed at the time that it left General Motors Corporation.

In Stewart v. Ford Motor Co., 553 F.2d 130, 136, 141 (D.C.Cir.1977), based on District of Columbia precedent, we approved this form of instruction for use in motor vehicle accident product liability cases. GM asserts that the state of the evidence in this case warranted an instruction less generous to the plaintiffs. The jury should have been instructed to return a verdict for the Halls, GM contends, only if it found that "some unreasonably dangerous defect in the drive shaft assembly" caused the accident. ⁵ We conclude that Judge Green properly patterned her instruction on the Stewart model.

This court held in Stewart that a plaintiff established her case by presenting (1) evidence tending to negate causes for the accident other than a defect in the car, and (2) evidence tending to show that the defendant-manufacturer introduced into the car whatever defect might have existed. Id. at 137. The court stated explicitly that the quantum of evidence required for these showings is not great. Further, the Stewart opinion indicated that proof that the product was new would warrant a jury inference that a defect, if there was one, existed at the time the product entered the stream of commerce. In addition, Stewart observed that a plaintiff would be called upon to negate only the most obvious causes, such as intoxication or excessive speed, unless the defendant offered specific accounts of how the accident might have happened in the absence of a defect in the automobile. Id. at 138.

The Halls brought their case comfortably within the Stewart frame. Mrs. Hall testified that, prior to the accident, her physical condition was excellent. She did not drink, suffer from diabetes, sickle cell anemia, epilepsy, or any other disease that could have caused dizziness or blackout spells. She did not have any mental disorders or high blood pressure and did not use any drugs. She further testified that she was an experienced driver (for fourteen years she had been a part-time cab driver), that she was familiar with the area in which the accident occurred (it was about a mile from her home), and that her speed at the time she heard an explosion had been 40-45 miles per hour. ⁶

Mrs. Hall had purchased her Buick five months prior to the accident. ⁷ From the start, the Halls experienced difficulties with the vehicle and sought correction from the seller, GM dealer Larry Buick, Inc. On several occasions following the purchase, the Halls complained to the dealer that the engine would miss, vibrate, hesitate upon acceleration, backfire, and run hot;...