Karpov v. Net Trucking, Inc.
| Decision Date | 05 December 2011 |
| Docket Number | CAUSE NO.: 1:06-CV-195-TLS |
| Parties | MARGARITA R. KARPOV, Individually and as Administratrix of the Estate of Dmitry B. Karpov, and MICHAEL DYLAN KARPOV, Plaintiffs, v. NET TRUCKING, INC., et al. Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Indiana |
This matter is before the Court on the Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment Against Defendant Stanislaw Gil [ECF No. 166].
This diversity action, which Plaintiffs Margarita R. Karpov, individually and as the Administratrix of the Estate of Dmitry B. Karpov, and Michael Dylan Karpov filed in November 2005, is a lawsuit pertaining to the 2005 death of Dmitry B. Karpov in a vehicle collision near Bristol, Indiana, on Interstate 80/90, a stretch of the Indiana Toll Road. In their Second Amended Complaint, the Plaintiffs made the following claims: negligent operation of a tractor trailer/wrongful death; wrongful operation of a trucking company; survivorship/pain and suffering; personal injury; familial loss of consortium; and fraudulent conveyance. This case has an extensive procedural history, which the Court has discussed in its previous Opinions and Orders [ECF Nos. 92, 117, 148 & 162] and need not repeat here. The Court, in its Opinion andOrder filed December 6, 2010, ordered the entry of a default judgment against the corporate employer of Defendant Gil, in the amounts of $6,721,657.00 as compensatory damages for Dmitry Karpov's wrongful death; $2,119,997.20 as compensatory damages for Margarita Karpov's personal injury claim; and $6,359,991.60 in punitive damages. Karpov v. Net Trucking, Inc., No. 1:06-CV-195-TLS, 2010 WL 5058538, at *6 (N.D. Ind. Dec. 6, 2010). The Second Amended Complaint sought damages against Defendant Gil for actions taken within the scope of his employment. (Second Am. Compl. ¶12, ECF No. 93.) The Plaintiffs seek summary judgment against Defendant Gil in order to join him in the judgment entered against his employer. Defendant Gil, proceeding pro se, objects to the Plaintiffs' Motion by presenting factual disputes and challenging the Plaintiffs' evidence. (Def.'s Resp. Pls.'s Mot. Summ. J., ECF No. 167.) For the reasons stated below, the Court will grant the Plaintiffs' Motion.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure state that a "court shall grant summary judgment if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Fed. R. Civ. P. 56(a). The motion should be granted so long as no rational fact finder could return a verdict in favor of the party opposing the motion. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986). A court's role is not to evaluate the weight of the evidence, to judge the credibility of witnesses, or to determine the truth of the matter, but instead to determine whether there is a genuine issue of triable fact. Id. at 249-50; Doe v. R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 42 F.3d 439, 443 (7th Cir. 1994). According to Rule 56:
A party asserting that a fact cannot be or is genuinely disputed must support theassertion by:
Although a bare contention that an issue of fact exists is insufficient to create a factual dispute, the court must construe all facts in a light most favorable to the nonmoving party, view all reasonable inferences in that party's favor, see Bellaver v. Quanex Corp., 200 F.3d 485, 491-92 (7th Cir. 2000), and avoid "the temptation to decide which party's version of the facts is more likely true," Payne v. Pauley, 337 F.3d 767, 770 (7th Cir. 2003). A material fact must be outcome determinative under the governing law. Harney v. Speedway SuperAmerica, LLC, 526 F.3d 1099, 1104 (7th Cir. 2008). "Irrelevant or unnecessary facts do not deter summary judgment, even when in dispute." Id.
Defendant Gil was the driver of the tractor trailer in the collision leading to the death of Dmitry Karpov and to the serious injuries suffered by Plaintiff Margarita Karpov. The Indiana Court of Appeals which reviewed the sentence in Defendant Gil's criminal case summarized the facts surrounding the accident:
On August 21, 2005, Gil drove a truck weighing 70,000 pounds into a construction zone in Elkhart County. Gil exceeded the speed limit for the construction zone. Gil failed to keep a proper watch for other traffic and what was happening with the traffic. Gil had alcohol in his system and caused a collision in the construction zone.
Gil v. State, No. 20A03-0611-CR-525, 2007 WL 1470150, at *1 .1 As a result of the car collision involving the Plaintiffs, Defendant Gil pled guilty to and was convicted of four counts of Class C felony reckless homicide, one of which was for the death of Dmitry Karpov, and one count of Class D felony criminal recklessness, relating to injuries suffered by Plaintiff Margarita Karpov. Id.
"[A] trial court should apply offensive collateral estoppel against a convicted criminal defendant on issues that were defended vigorously in the criminal case in the absence of a showing that it is unfair to the defendant to give conclusive effect to the conviction." Doe v. Tobias, 715 N.E.2d 829, 830 (Ind. 1999). Under Indiana law, the Court may rely on evidence of a criminal conviction in a civil trial. Id. at 831; Ind. Code § 34-39-3-1 ()."Collateral estoppel is termed offensive when the plaintiff seeks to foreclose the defendant from litigating an issue the defendant has previously litigated unsuccessfully in an action with another party."Tobias, 715 N.E.2d at 831(quotation marks omitted). "To determine whether to permit the use of offensive collateral estoppel, the trial court must consider whether the party in the prior action had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the facts and whether it would be otherwise unfair to permit the use of collateral estoppel given the facts of the particular case." Miller v. Owens, 953 N.E.2d 1079, 1083 (Ind. Ct. App. 2011) (citing Tobias, 715 N.E.2d at 832).
While the Indiana Supreme Court, in Tobias, stated that collateral estoppel should be applied where a defendant has defended against the criminal charges "vigorously," the Court finds support in Tobias for applying the same rule to a conviction predicated on a guilty plea. Where a defendant had a full and fair opportunity to litigate the facts in the prior criminal case, a court must then look to whether it would be otherwise unfair to permit a plaintiff to use collateral estoppel against that defendant. To determine if the use of collateral estoppel against a defendant is fair, the court must consider "'the defendant's incentive to litigate the prior action, the defendant's ability to defend the prior action, and the ability of the plaintiff to have joined the prior action.'" Tobias, 715 N.E.2d at 832 (quoting Tofany v. NBS Imaging Systems, Inc., 616 N.E.2d 1034, 1038 (Ind.1993)). But, in the typical criminal case the defendant had an extraordinarily strong incentive to defend, the defendant did defend against the prior action with the assistance of counsel, and the plaintiff could not have joined the prior criminal case. Id. All these factors militate for application of collateral estoppel where the conviction at issue is based on a guilty plea. See Wayne Chem., Inc. v. Terpening, No. 1:08-CV-269 JVB, 2010 WL 3782130, at *3-4 (N.D. Ind. Sept. 17, 2010) ().
The Plaintiffs seek to estop Defendant Gil from denying the underlying facts of his conviction. Defendant Gil has presented the Court with no evidence that he was denied a full and fair opportunity to defend himself against his criminal charges. The Court finds no unfairness in the application of collateral estoppel to deny Defendant Gil the opportunity to relitigate the facts underlying each element of his criminal conviction. Defendant Gil provided the Court with no basis for such a finding and the record suggests that Defendant Gil had every incentive and opportunity to challenge the basis for his conviction at the time he pled guilty.2
The three elements underlying Defendant Gil's reckless homicide conviction are "causation, that the act resulting in the homicide was voluntary, and that the defendant's conduct was reckless and not merely negligent." Gibbs v. State, 677 N.E.2d 1106, 1108-09 (Ind. Ct. App. 1997) (quoting Taylor v. State, 457 N.E.2d 594, 597 n.6 (Ind. Ct. App. 1983). The elements underlying Defendant Gil's conviction for criminal recklessness are that "[a] person . . . recklessly . . . inflict[ed] serious bodily injury on another person." Ind. Code. § 35-42-2-2(d) (2004).3 With regard to both crimes, under Indiana criminal law, "[a] person engages in conduct 'recklessly' if he engages in the conduct in plain, conscious, and unjustifiable disregard of harm that might result and the disregard involves a substantial deviation from acceptable standards ofco...
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