Mitsubishi Motors Corporation v. Laliberte, No. 4D08-2211 (Fla. App. 6/16/2010)

• Decision Date: 16 June 2010
• Docket Number: No. 4D08-2211.,4D08-2211.
• Parties: MITSUBISHI MOTORS CORPORATION, Appellant, v. PETER LALIBERTE, as Personal Representative of the Estate of SCOTT T. LALIBERTE, deceased, Appellee.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

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MITSUBISHI MOTORS CORPORATION, Appellant,
v.
PETER LALIBERTE, as Personal Representative of the Estate of SCOTT T. LALIBERTE, deceased, Appellee. No. 4D08-2211. District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District. June 16, 2010.

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, Palm Beach County, Elizabeth T. Maass, Judge, L.T. Case No. 2005-006369 CA AI.

Wendy F. Lumish and Jeffrey A. Cohen of Carlton Fields, P.A., Miami, for appellant.

Julie H. Littky-Rubin of Lytal, Reiter, Clark, Fountain & Williams, LLP, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

DAMOORGIAN, J.

This is a products liability case that resulted in a multi-million dollar judgment against Mitsubishi Motors Corporation. Mitsubishi appeals on two grounds. First, it claims that the trial court made improper and unfairly prejudicial comments to the jury, thus denying it a fair trial. Second, it argues that the trial court's evidentiary rulings in connection with its expert testimony were contrary to the law and prevented it from mounting legally permissible defenses to the products liability claims. We agree with Mitsubishi on the second ground and remand for a new trial.

On September 25, 2004, Lyann Agresar was driving a 2000 Mitsubishi Nativa. Scott Laliberte was seated in the vehicle's front passenger seat. Both occupants were wearing their seat belts. During the trip, Agresar lost control of the vehicle while traveling seventy to eighty-five miles per hour. The vehicle rolled over multiple times. While the vehicle was rolling, Laliberte's stitched loop seat belt performed as designed and tore loose, providing ten inches of additional seat belt webbing. Additionally, Laliberte's seatback deformed and reclined rearward to the point that it contacted the rear seat in the vehicle. Laliberte was partially ejected through the rear passenger window, which had broken, causing his head to come in contact with the ground. He subsequently died from injuries he sustained in the accident. Agresar remained in the vehicle during the accident and sustained no permanent injuries.

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Peter Laliberte, the personal representative of Laliberte's estate, filed a products liability lawsuit against Mitsubishi, seeking compensatory and punitive damages based on theories of strict liability and negligence. He claimed that design defects in the seat belt, seatback, and side window glass caused Laliberte to be partially ejected; and absent these defects, he would not have been injured. The jury found the vehicle's seat belt design was defective and a legal cause of Laliberte's injuries, resulting in his death.

The first issue on appeal arose when plaintiff's counsel requested that the jurors be allowed to inspect two Mitsubishi Montero sport utility vehicles for demonstrative purposes.¹ While the jurors were inspecting the vehicles, it was discovered that the front passenger seatbacks of both vehicles would not fully recline. Although it was later revealed that this problem was caused by a coin in each of the seats' reclining mechanisms, counsel agreed that the court should instruct the jury that there was a problem with the passenger seats and that they should operate like the driver seats. Two separate jury instructions were given, and each time the court inadvertently used the word "defect" in describing the problem with the reclining mechanisms in the passenger seats. The instruction also informed the jury that the front passenger seatbacks had originally reclined like the driver seats. After the second instruction, one of the jurors questioned what the judge meant by use of the word "defect." The judge responded, "No, it simply doesn't operate or something similar to that."

Mitsubishi moved for a mistrial, arguing that the court's use of the term "defect" was highly prejudicial because it was a comment on the evidence and ultimate issue in dispute. The court denied the motion, finding that there was no reasonable doubt that the jurors understood that the coin in the recliner mechanism was wholly unrelated to the design defect allegations involved in the case. The court next gave the following curative instruction to the jury:

Immediately before lunch on Thursday you viewed exemplars of both the 2000 and 2000.5 Mitsubishi Montero. The exemplars were provided by Plaintiff. As you know, the right front seats in both vehicles did not recline. We have since learned that a quarter was located in the inboard inertial locking mechanism of each seat that prevented the seats from reclining. Mistakenly during the view, I referred

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to the failure of the right front passenger seats to recline as a defect. This was a misstatement by me. Obviously the inboard inertial locking mechanism did not operate correctly because there was a quarter in each mechanism preventing proper operation. Simply put, the exemplars' right front passenger seats' inability to recline during your inspection was caused solely by the placement of the coins which operated as stops, and had nothing to do with the mechanism's design or manufacture. I now instruct you, that when considering the evidence in this case, you must completely disregard the issue with the right front passenger seats' on the exemplars inability to recline. If you anticipate any problem following this instruction, please raise your hand.

No member of the jury responded either verbally or by hand gesture.

Mitsubishi argues that the trial court's comments constituted a statement on the evidence and the ultimate issue to be decided, in violation of section 90.106, Florida Statutes (2008) ("A judge may not sum up the evidence or comment to the jury upon the weight of the evidence, the credibility of the witnesses, or the guilt of the accused."). See also Jacques v. State, 883 So. 2d 902, 905 (Fla. 4th DCA 2004) ("For the trial court to accuse defense counsel of misrepresenting the evidence not only cast counsel in a poor light in front of the jury but, more importantly, supported the state's argument by implying to the jury that, in the court's view, Fondrose was a biased witness."); Vaughn v. Progressive Cas. Ins. Co., 907 So. 2d 1248, 1252 (Fla. 5th DCA 2005).

By arguing that the court's comment violated section 90.106, Mitsubishi seeks to have us apply a de novo standard of review. However, given the context within which the statement was made, and a reasonable interpretation of the trial court's use of the word "defect" within that context, we hold that the trial court's comment was not intended to serve as a comment on the evidence or the court's opinion on the ultimate issue of liability. Accordingly, we review the trial court's denial of Mitsubishi's motion for mistrial under an abuse of discretion standard. See Goodwin v. State, 751 So. 2d 537, 546 (Fla. 1999) ("[A] motion for mistrial is subject to an abuse of discretion standard of review." "A motion for mistrial falls within the sound discretion of the trial court, and should be granted only when necessary to ensure that the defendant receives a fair trial." Siprien v. State, 812 So. 2d 536, 539 (Fla. 4th DCA 2002).

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Under an abuse of discretion standard, inadvertent and adequately-cured comments by a judge are not grounds for a mistrial. See Baker v. State, 578 So. 2d 37, 38 (Fla. 4th DCA 1991) ("[T]he inadvertent comment in the instant case does not involve a trial judge's improper comment upon the testimony of witnesses or departure from an impartial role.").

It is clear on the record before us that the trial court's reference to the seat being defective was inadvertent and not calculated to serve as a comment on the evidence. Moreover, any confusion on the part of the jurors was quickly resolved by the trial court giving a curative instruction and then inquiring whether any juror could not follow the instruction. No juror responded that he or she could not. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Mitsubishi's motion for mistrial.

Turning to the second issue on appeal, Mitsubishi claims that the trial court's exclusion of certain defense expert witnesses' test results left it stranded with bare expert opinions that were "drained of force and color" because they were unsupported by demonstrable proof. Mitsubishi argues that the plaintiff capitalized on these evidentiary rulings during closing by implying that the expert opinions were not supported by science. In sum, Mitsubishi argues that the court's rulings resulted in extreme prejudice, entitling it to a new trial.

In its complaint, the plaintiff alleged that the Nativa's front passenger seat belt was defectively designed because it allowed too much slack in the belt during the accident. The plaintiff further asserted that the seatback was defective because it yielded rearward in the accident. The plaintiff claimed that this combination of defects allowed Laliberte to be partially ejected, resulting in his death. At issue in this case were two vehicle components of the 2000 Nativa: (1) the seat belt associated with the right front passenger seat, and (2) the seatback.

The front passenger seat belt in the 2000 Nativa incorporated an energy management ("EM") or energy absorbing ("EA") stitched loop system.² This stitched loop seat belt system was designed in such a manner that ten inches of seat belt webbing was folded over and sewn together with a series of threaded stitches contained within a plastic scabbard. The seat belt stitches were designed to break loose and introduce additional seat belt webbing into the right front passenger's

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restraint system to better manage occupant movement in frontal impacts.

The vehicle's seatbacks were designed with an outboard recliner mechanism that allowed them to recline or straighten to a comfortable position. In a rear impact, the seatback was designed to yield rearward in response to force, and was intended to deform in order to dissipate energy. The passenger seatback...