Peterson v. Hyundai Motor Co.

• Decision Date: 18 November 2021
• Docket Number: 20190979-CA
• Citation: 502 P.3d 320
• Parties: Larry PETERSON and Gloria Peterson, Appellants and Cross-appellees, v. HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, Hyundai Motor America, and Murdock Hyundai LLC, Appellees and Cross-appellants.
• Court: Utah Court of Appeals

502 P.3d 320

Larry PETERSON and Gloria Peterson, Appellants and Cross-appellees,

v.HYUNDAI MOTOR COMPANY, Hyundai Motor America, and Murdock Hyundai LLC, Appellees and Cross-appellants.

No. 20190979-CA

Court of Appeals of Utah.

Filed November 18, 2021

Trent J. Waddoups, John E. Hansen, and Bradley W. Madsen, Salt Lake City, Attorneys for Appellants and Cross-appellees

Tracy H. Fowler, Paul Shakespear, Annika L. Jones, Salt Lake City, Matthew H. Lembke, and Jude S. Halawi, Attorneys for Appellees and Cross-appellants

Judge Ryan M. Harris authored this Opinion, in which Judges David N. Mortensen and Jill M. Pohlman concurred.

Opinion

HARRIS, Judge:

¶1 A fire that started in their carport—where their hybrid Hyundai Sonata (the Car) was parked—destroyed Larry and Gloria Petersons’ home and most of its contents. Believing that the fire started as a result of a manufacturing defect in the Car, the Petersons sued Hyundai Motor Company, Hyundai Motor America, and Murdock Hyundai LLC (collectively, Hyundai) for, among other things, negligence and products liability. A jury awarded the Petersons $752,000 in damages, but the trial court refused to add prejudgment interest to that award. In addition, the court denied Hyundai's motion for judgment as a matter of law, but granted Hyundai's motion for new trial, determining that problems with jury instructions and with the Petersons’ expert disclosures warranted a retrial.

¶2 Following entry of the trial court's order granting Hyundai's motion for new trial, the Petersons filed both a notice of appeal and a petition for leave to file an interlocutory appeal. The notice of appeal—purporting to directly appeal from both the new trial order as well as any "subsidiary rulings denying prejudgment interest and attorney fees"—was broader than the petition for interlocutory appeal, which sought leave to challenge only the new trial order. Hyundai, for its part, filed no petition for interlocutory appeal, but did file a notice of cross-appeal purporting to directly appeal from the trial court's order denying its motion for judgment as a matter of law. A panel of this court determined that appellate jurisdiction existed over the direct appeal, but it also granted the Petersons’ petition for interlocutory appeal and consolidated the two appeals.

¶3 Upon reconsideration of the jurisdictional question, we conclude that we lack appellate jurisdiction to consider a direct appeal from an order granting a new trial in a civil case, and that we must therefore dismiss both the Petersons’ direct appeal—including their challenge to the ruling regarding prejudgment interest—and Hyundai's direct cross-appeal. We proceed to consider the merits of the issue raised in the Petersons’ interlocutory appeal: whether the trial court properly granted a new trial. On that issue, we affirm the trial court's order and remand for further proceedings, including a new trial.

BACKGROUND

¶4 On the Monday before Thanksgiving, Larry Peterson woke early to catch a flight to Florida to celebrate the holiday with his daughter. While in the bathroom, Larry noticed the lights flickering on and off. He quickly woke Gloria and the two went to investigate. Soon they could smell "electrical smoke" and noticed an abnormal light coming from the carport area. As they looked through a window from the house into the carport, they saw "a big fire coming out through the top" of the Car's sunroof. Larry described the fire as not "a normal fire," because it was "like sparklers, like electrical," and "looked like the 4th of July." Gloria called first responders, and the couple only had time to quickly get dressed and grab the family dog before fleeing the home. Firefighters were eventually able to extinguish the blaze, but not before it destroyed the Petersons’ home and most of its contents.

¶5 The Petersons had purchased the Car just four months earlier; its entire maintenance history consisted of one oil change a few weeks before the fire. Gloria was the primary driver of the Car and, other than one late-summer trip to Wyoming, the Petersons had used the Car only to travel "around town." The day before the fire—a Sunday—Gloria had driven the Car to church and back, returning for good just after 4:00 p.m. To the best of Gloria's recollection, she had turned the car off before proceeding into the house, although she was not "100 percent" sure about that. But later that night, after dark, the Petersons’ son-in-law came over and noticed that several cats were sitting on the car where the windshield met the hood, and he felt the hood and observed that it was warm.

¶6 After the fire, the Petersons learned that the local fire marshal who had investigated the blaze had concluded that the fire had started in the Car, under the hood in the engine compartment. And the Petersons consulted with two other experts—Gary Hodson, a fire investigator, and John Palmer, an electrical engineer—who likewise concluded that the fire had started in the Car, and who in addition concluded that the likely cause of the fire was a manufacturing defect: a high-voltage electrical cable (the Cable) running from the Car's battery to its engine had been improperly pinched or crushed between the Car's frame and its suspension assembly, causing the Cable's insulation to wear away over time. Eventually, the Petersons sued Hyundai, bringing claims for products liability, negligence, and breach of warranty, and seeking damages for loss of property.

¶7 Just a few weeks after filing their complaint, the Petersons provided initial disclosures to Hyundai. Although at that point the parties were not yet required to disclose even the names of their retained experts, let alone any report from them, see Utah R. Civ. P. 26(a)(1), the Petersons produced a copy of "preliminary" reports prepared by both Hodson and Palmer. In Hodson's report, he offered no opinion as to the precise spot in the Car's undercarriage where the Cable had been pinched. But Palmer did: his report included a photograph with a superimposed green arrow indicating precisely "where the [C]able had been crushed." That photograph showed the pinch point being very near a particular bolt hole in the Car's undercarriage; we refer to this potential pinch point as "Point 1."

¶8 After the conclusion of fact discovery, the Petersons formally designated Hodson and Palmer as retained experts, in keeping with the requirements of Utah procedural rules, see id. R. 26(a)(4)(C)(i), and stated in that disclosure that both Hodson and Palmer would "testify consistent with [their] preliminary report[s]." Following these expert disclosures, Hyundai opted to take depositions of Hodson and Palmer rather than require them to submit more complete reports. See id. R. 26(a)(4)(B).

¶9 During Hodson's deposition, he offered specific opinions that the fire had started inside the Car and was caused by the Cable having been pinched or crushed. But Hodson was not asked to—and did not—identify the precise point at which the Cable was pinched, stating only generally that it had been pinched somewhere in "the lower frame area," a nonspecific area that Hodson stated was depicted in a series of eleven different photographs attached to his report.¹ At the conclusion of his deposition, Hodson was asked if, during the deposition, he had "given [Hyundai] all of the opinions that [he] expect[ed] to testify to at trial," and he answered in the affirmative.

¶10 During Palmer's deposition, he likewise offered specific opinions that the fire started inside the Car and was caused by the Cable being pinched or crushed. He also opined that the Cable had been energized at the time the fire started, although he could not definitively say how that came to be; in his view, either Gloria had left the Car on when she came home from church, or the safety systems built into the Car had malfunctioned. Palmer, like Hodson, was not directly asked about the precise location where the Cable had been pinched; he was, however, asked whether "the entire sheath [was] pinched, ... or just the [C]able," and he responded by stating that "[t]he entire assembly" was pinched, and volunteered that when he looked at the undercarriage of the Car, he "could see the [C]able goes right up to this frame member and comes out the other side," and that he "took the nut off, opened it up, and lo and behold here it was." He referred to a "mark on the frame" and on "the lower arm," and stated that "[r]ight in there is where it was," but the record does not reveal whether Palmer was referring to any specific diagram or photograph during that portion of his testimony. At the conclusion of his deposition, Palmer was asked whether he had "expressed all of the opinions today that [he expected] to express at trial," and he stated that "[n]othing else comes to mind right now" and "obviously my report contains a lot of the information we've already discussed" but that he could not "think of anything that's in the report that we haven't already discussed."

¶11 To rebut the opinions of Hodson and Palmer, Hyundai designated engineer Jeff Colwell as an expert witness. Colwell prepared a report setting forth his conclusions; Hyundai provided that report to the Petersons, in lieu of a deposition. In his report, Colwell opined that the Car was not the cause of the fire, and that the fire had instead been the result of one of several other potential causes, although he could not say which one. In particular, Colwell took issue with Hodson's and Palmer's conclusion that the fire had been caused by the Cable being pinched, specifically opining that the Cable could not have been "crushed in the location [Point 1] in which [Palmer] alleges the fault occurred" because that location was too far away from where the Cable was routed. He also opined that the Cable could not have been energized at the time of the fire, and therefore could not have caused the fire in any event.

¶12 Some nine months after issuance of Colwell's report, ...