Tatham v. Bridgestone Americas Holding, Inc.

• Citation: 473 S.W.3d 734
• Parties: Lea Ann Tatham v. Bridgestone Americas Holding, Inc., et al.
• Decision Date: 30 October 2015
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

473 S.W.3d 734

Lea Ann Tatham

v.Bridgestone Americas Holding, Inc., et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee, AT JACKSON.

January 8, 2015 Session Heard at Knoxville

Filed October 30, 2015

Emily Turner Landry, Julia Kavanagh, and George T. Lewis, Memphis, Tennessee, for the appellants, Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC and GITI Tire (USA) Ltd.

Donald D. Zuccarello, Jay W. Hicks, and Kimberly Stark, Nashville, Tennessee, for the appellee, Lea Ann Tatham.

JEFFREY S. BIVINS, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which SHARON G. LEE, C.J., and CORNELIA A. CLARK, J., joined.

OPINION

JEFFREY S. BIVINS, J.

This products liability case arises out of an accident which resulted from the failure of a tire purchased less than three months before the accident. As a result of the accident, the plaintiff's vehicle was totaled. Subsequently, the entire vehicle, including the tire, was destroyed. This case presents the following issues for review: (1) whether the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to dismiss this case as a sanction for spoliation of evidence; (2) whether the trial court erred in denying summary judgment to the Defendants on the issues of causation and whether the tire was defective or unreasonably dangerous; and (3) whether the trial court erred in denying summary judgment on the issue of the application of the apparent manufacturer doctrine. Upon a thorough review of the record and the applicable law, we conclude that the trial court did not err with respect to any of these issues. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Factual and Procedural Background

This products liability suit, filed by Lea Ann Tatham ("the Plaintiff"), arises from the failure of an automobile tire ("the tire") sold by Bridgestone Retail Operations, LLC, and GITI Tire (USA) (collectively "the Defendants"). The manufacturer of the tire, GITI Tire (Hualin), a Chinese company, is not a party to the case.

According to the Plaintiff's affidavit and deposition taken in this case, the Plaintiff bought a 1996 Cadillac STS online from a private owner in 2007. On March 3, 2008, the Plaintiff bought two Primewell PS830 rear tires from Firestone Complete Auto Care in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The Plaintiff stated that she chose those particular tires because they were "the best value." She could not recall whether the associate assisting her informed her about warranties associated with the tires.

The Plaintiff stated that she never checked the air pressure in her tires herself. She did not recall whether anyone else checked the air pressure in her tires in the three months following the tire purchase. She also did not recall "running over anything unusual in the road" or "hitting anything" with her vehicle during that time.

On May 30, 2008, the Plaintiff was involved in a single-vehicle accident. She was returning from a long trip on the interstate when one of the newly purchased tires failed. On the way home, she recalled stopping at a Popeyes in Memphis and for gas in Jackson, Tennessee. At the time that she reached Jackson, she was approximately six and a half hours into her eight-hour trip. She denied experiencing any problems with the vehicle prior to stopping for gas in Jackson. The Plaintiff did not recall seeing anything wrong with her tires when she stopped for gas, but she acknowledged that she did not intentionally look at the tires at that time.

The Plaintiff could not recall much about the circumstances immediately preceding the accident but stated that, shortly after leaving Jackson, she must have lost control of her vehicle because she remembered saying, "Oh, my God." The vehicle struck a guardrail, flipped, and finally landed in a ditch. She did not know how fast she had been driving but stated that she usually drove seventy miles per hour on that interstate.

Dr. Tammy Rogers, a witness to the accident, testified by deposition that she was riding in the passenger's seat of her vehicle while her son, Matt, was driving. She described the weather conditions on that day as "clear and sunny." Dr. Rogers then stated,

Matt was driving and we got on the interstate. And I'm driving with a 16–year–old. So in case anybody asks, yes, I was paying a lot of attention because I was letting a 16–year–old drive. So I was in the passenger seat, and we were just driving. And we got into the left-hand lane to pass someone because there was probably more traffic than normal, being a holiday weekend. And so we were going around somebody, and we got behind a car that had—we had been following them for a couple of miles because they were also passing the cars that were there, and we noticed something started kind of flapping underneath the car.

Dr. Rogers stated that the vehicle in front of them was "driving in a normal fashion" and never drove on the "rumble strips" on the shoulder. She continued, "Matt and I both noticed something that was black and seeming to flap underneath the car. So at that point, we kind of watched it for maybe 30 seconds to a minute, and I told Matt[,] .... [s]low down and back off and give that car some room." She described the "flapping" as being "on the inside part of the tire." She estimated that what she saw "flapping" was approximately four to six inches long.

Dr. Rogers testified that, a few seconds after telling Matt to slow down, "something came out from under the car." She compared the object to "pieces of tire you see on the side of the road when semis have blow-outs." She testified that, after the object came off of the vehicle,

[t]he car started going towards the median and it appeared that the driver tried to correct. And when they corrected, the car spun out. And so it spun back. So it had gone to the—to the median first, and then it spun back across the interstate, hit the guardrail and flipped.

The Plaintiff confirmed that she was wearing her seatbelt at the time of the accident. The first thing she remembered after the accident was "[g]etting out of the car and checking on [her] daughter." As soon as she checked on her daughter, the Plaintiff suddenly realized that she had a lot of pain in her back, elbows, and knees.

She denied that she was talking on her cell phone at the time of the accident. The Plaintiff could not recall any specific details about her vehicle after the accident or the accident scene.

Around the time that the Plaintiff checked on her daughter, a woman approached her and asked her if she was okay. This woman, later identified as Dr. Rogers, stayed with the Plaintiff until paramedics arrived. A wrecker service towed her vehicle from the scene and later informed the Plaintiff that her vehicle was totaled. At the advice of her insurance company, the Plaintiff transferred title of her vehicle, including the tire, to the wrecker service. According to the Plaintiff, at the time that she transferred title to the wrecker service, she had not yet hired an attorney and did not realize that the tire needed to be preserved. As a result of the accident, the Plaintiff suffered a broken back, which forced her to stop working.

The Plaintiff filed her complaint against the Defendants on May 7, 2009, alleging that the tire was defective and/or unreasonably dangerous. The Plaintiff claimed that she was entitled to relief based on grounds of strict liability, negligence, and breaches of implied warranty of fitness, implied warranty of merchantability, and duty to warn.

The Defendants moved for summary judgment, which the trial court denied. Following discovery, the Defendants again moved for summary judgment and to have the case dismissed as a sanction for the spoliation of evidence. The trial court denied the Defendants' second motion for summary judgment and their motion to dismiss. However, the trial court granted the Defendants an interlocutory appeal. The Defendants filed an application for permission to appeal with the Court of Appeals pursuant to Rule 9 of the Tennessee Rules of Appellate Procedure. The Court of Appeals denied the Defendants' application.

We granted the Defendants' application for permission to appeal to decide the following issues: (1) whether the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to dismiss this case as a sanction for spoliation of evidence; (2) whether the trial court erred in denying summary judgment to the Defendants on the issues of causation and whether the tire was defective or unreasonably dangerous; and (3) whether the trial court erred in denying summary judgment on the issue of the application of the apparent manufacturer doctrine.

Analysis

Spoliation of Evidence

The Defendants assert that the trial court abused its discretion by refusing to dismiss the case as a remedy for the spoliation of evidence pursuant to Rule 34A.02 of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 34A.02 provides as follows: "Rule 37 sanctions may be imposed upon a party or an agent of a party who discards, destroys, mutilates, alters, or conceals evidence." Tenn. R. Civ. P. 34A.02. In turn, Rule 37 gives a trial court the power to impose a range of sanctions for failure to comply with a discovery order, including: dismissal of the action, rendering a judgment by default, limiting the introduction of certain claims or evidence, entering an order designating that certain facts shall be taken as established, and striking out pleadings or parts of pleadings.See Tenn. R. Civ. P. 37.02(A)-(D). In its Order declining to dismiss the case as a sanction for the spoliation of the tire, the trial court reasoned, "[T]he Plaintiff did not intentionally participate in the destruction of such evidence following the accident in question. Therefore, the Defendant's request that the case be dismissed as a sanction for alleged spoliation of evidence is ... denied."

The Defendants argue that "the trial court applied an incorrect legal standard in its analysis of the spoliation issue" because "the primary, if not the sole, factor leading to the trial court's decision not to impose sanctions for spoliation was...