Keeney v. Mystic Valley Hunt Club, Inc.

• Decision Date: 31 January 2006
• Docket Number: No. 25716.,No. 25538.,25538.,25716.
• Citation: 93 Conn.App. 368,889 A.2d 829
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: Heather KEENEY et al. v. MYSTIC VALLEY HUNT CLUB, INC.

Page 829

889 A.2d 829

93 Conn.App. 368

Heather KEENEY et al. v. MYSTIC VALLEY HUNT CLUB, INC.

No. 25538.

No. 25716.

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued October 12, 2005.

Decided January 31, 2006.

Robert I. Reardon, Jr., New London, with whom, on the brief, was Robert T. Rimmer, Old Saybrook, for the appellants (plaintiffs).

Harry M. Stokes, Maspeth, NY, for the appellee (defendant).

DRANGINIS, FLYNN and DUPONT, Js.

FLYNN, J.

The plaintiffs, Heather Keeney, a minor,¹ and her mother, Teresa Keeney, appeal from the judgment of the trial court rendered on a jury verdict that the court directed in favor of the defendant, Mystic Valley Hunt Club, Inc. On appeal, the plaintiffs claim that the court improperly (1) precluded their expert from testifying and (2) directed a verdict in favor of the defendant and denied their motion to set aside the verdict. We affirm the judgment.²

Heather Keeney was a student receiving horseback riding lessons at a riding academy owned by the defendant, when, during a lesson, she allegedly was told to remove her feet from the stirrups and to kick the horse. In response to this action, the horse allegedly lunged forward, and Heather was thrown to the ground, causing a fracture to her right arm that required surgery, leaving significant scarring. The plaintiffs also alleged that Heather will incur future medical expenses directly related to this accident.

On May 27, 2004, the court directed a jury verdict in favor of the defendant. On June 3, 2004, the plaintiffs filed a motion to set aside the verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. Before the court could rule on this motion, however, the plaintiffs, on June 14, 2004, filed an appeal (AC 25538). On July 26, 2004, the court denied the plaintiffs' motion to set aside the verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, and it rendered judgment for the defendant. On August 12, 2004, the plaintiffs filed a second appeal (AC 25716) challenging the denial of the motion to set aside the verdict and the final judgment. On April 13, 2005, we ordered the appeals consolidated.³

I

On appeal, the plaintiffs claim that the court improperly precluded their liability expert from testifying on the ground that she lacked the necessary qualifications. The defendant argues that the court did not abuse its discretion in precluding the plaintiffs' expert because "[t]he witness clearly had no demonstrable special skill, knowledge, education or experience applicable to the specific matters in issue." We agree that the court did not abuse its discretion.

"Our standard of review regarding a trial court's ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony is well settled. [W]e note that the trial court has wide discretion in ruling on the admissibility of expert testimony and, unless that discretion has been abused or the ruling involves a clear misconception of the law, the trial court's decision will not be disturbed." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Coughlin v. Anderson, 270 Conn. 487, 514-15, 853 A.2d 460 (2004). "The test for admissibility of the opinion of an expert witness is whether the expert knows the applicable standard of care and can evaluate the defendant's conduct, given that standard. . . . Even if a court has acted improperly in connection with the introduction of evidence, reversal of a judgment is not necessarily mandated because there must not only be an evidentiary error, there also must be harm." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Farrell v. Bass, 90 Conn.App. 804, 811, 879 A.2d 516 (2005).

After voir dire of the plaintiffs' proffered expert witness, the court found that she "[did not] meet the standard for being able. . . to testify in this case regarding the standard of care for riding instructors, specifically riding instructors of relatively inexperienced novice riders. She teaches no novice riders. Her certification is over thirty years old [and] there has been no testimony regarding her continuing education. She's not a member of the associations which issued the guidelines. The bulk of her time, 90 percent of her time is spent in activities other than instruction and . . . in Connecticut, when we have expert testimony, we ask that somebody be in the same field . . . for standard of care testimony . . . .

"And it seems to me that a riding instructor, if you are going to have standard of care testimony, should be from . . . [someone] who either is a riding instructor, training riding instructors, is part of the structure or embodiment that certifies or the board which reviews the qualifications for or standards for instructors. This woman, while . . . very experienced, is in the basic business of training horses, dealing with how you run a stable, taking care of horses. She's training thoroughbreds, doing dressage . . . . Ten percent of her time is spent training, mostly incidental training, experienced riders who are training for dressage competition, jumping incidental to training of their horses . . . . That's a far cry from your neighborhood stable with the instructor training novices where there are techniques."

In this case, the court precluded the plaintiffs' expert because it concluded that the witness was not qualified as an expert fit to judge another riding instructor in technique in the area of novice instruction. The plaintiffs argue that the court applied the wrong standard to assess the expert's qualifications and that the court should have, instead, focused on whether this expert's testimony would have been helpful to the jury by virtue of her special skill or knowledge. The issue in this case, however, was whether Heather Keeney's riding instructor was negligent in providing an unsafe instruction to this novice rider. The expert, although having been a certified horse riding instructor since 1973, testified that she had not trained young novice riders in more than twenty years, had taken no refresher courses in training students, had no specialized training in the use of lunge lines with novice riders, had never prepared any instructional or training materials for instructors, had never served on a safety committee and had never taught riding instructors. On the basis of this testimony, we cannot conclude that the court abused its discretion in precluding this witness from testifying as to the appropriate standard for a riding instructor to teach a young novice rider. It is not clear from her voir dire testimony that she knew the applicable standard of care and had the ability to evaluate the defendant's conduct. See Farrell v. Bass, supra, 90 Conn.App. at 811, 879 A.2d 516.

II

The plaintiffs next claim that the court improperly directed a verdict in favor of the defendant on the basis of the plaintiffs failure to establish a prima facie case, and then improperly failed to set aside that verdict. They argue that they "adduced sufficient evidence at trial, even without expert testimony, to establish a prima facie case of negligence." The defendant argues that the plaintiffs "introduced absolutely no evidence as to the requisite standard of care nor of any deviation from an established standard," and, without such evidence, "there can be no proof of a causal connection between [the] plaintiff's injuries and [the] defendant's acts or omissions." In response, the plaintiffs argue that they did not make a claim of...