Tratchel v. Essex Group, Inc.

• Decision Date: 21 February 1990
• Docket Number: No. 88-1393,88-1393
• Citation: 452 N.W.2d 171
• Parties: Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 12,401 Carl E. TRATCHEL, Individually; and Dorothy Tratchel, as the Guardian of Carl E. Tratchel and the Conservator of his Property; Judy Tratchel; Dorothy Tratchel, Individually; and Leland T. Tratchel, Appellees, v. ESSEX GROUP, INC., Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 171

452 N.W.2d 171

Prod.Liab.Rep. (CCH) P 12,401

Carl E. TRATCHEL, Individually; and Dorothy Tratchel, as the Guardian of Carl E. Tratchel and the Conservator of his Property; Judy Tratchel; Dorothy Tratchel, Individually; and Leland T. Tratchel, Appellees, v. ESSEX GROUP, INC., Appellant.

No. 88-1393.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Feb. 21, 1990.

As Corrected March 7, 1990.

Ludwig B. Gartner, Jr. and Scott P. Drawe of Faegre & Benson, Minneapolis, Minn., Jack D. Hilmes of Duncan, Jones, Riley & Finley, Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas D. Hanson, Barry A. Russell, and Lu Ann White of Hanson, Bjork & Russell, Des Moines, and Donald L. Schild of the Schild Law Office, Grinnell, for appellees.

Considered by McGIVERIN, C.J., and HARRIS, SCHULTZ, NEUMAN and ANDREASEN, JJ.

SCHULTZ, Justice.

This is an appeal from a judgment entered against Essex Group, Inc. (Essex), a manufacturer of a gas control unit. Carl Tratchel and his mother Dorothy Tratchel were severely injured as a result of a liquid petroleum (LP) gas explosion.

Carl and his wife Judy Tratchel purchased a Lennox gas furnace for their house in March 1982. The furnace was equipped with a gas control unit, the SX242, manufactured by Essex. The Tratchels subsequently moved, apparently turning off the gas furnace, water heater and stove. On October 13, 1983, Carl and his mother went to the house to do some repairs in preparation for sale. As it was unseasonably cold, Carl lit a match to start the furnace so the house would be heated while they worked. An explosion occurred. Both Tratchels were severely burned and remained in the University of Iowa Burn Center for over a month. Carl was subsequently injured in another accident and declared incompetent; Dorothy was appointed his conservator.

This action for personal injuries and property damages was commenced by Dorothy, individually and on Carl's behalf as his conservator. Carl also sought damages for loss of consortium on behalf of his children, Brett and Todd, Junior. Carl's wife Judy and Dorothy's husband Leland also asked for loss-of-consortium damages. In addition to Essex, the Tratchels named the following as additional defendants: Lennox Industries, Inc., the furnace manufacturer; Brookwood Inc., the retailer and installer of the LP gas furnace; Master Tank & Welding, Inc., the tank manufacturer; Milligan Brothers Propane Co., the gas tank installer and LP supplier; Fisher Controls International, Inc., the manufacturer of the regulators; Pennwalt Corp., the manufacturer of LP gas odorant; and Hydrocarbon Transportation, Inc., the gas supplier. During the litigation, plaintiffs settled their claims with all defendants except Essex.

At the close of the evidence, the trial court submitted special verdicts and interrogatories which incorporated plaintiffs' three theories of liability against Essex. Plaintiffs alleged Essex manufactured a defective gas control unit and sought recovery based on: (1) strict liability; (2) negligence; and (3) fraud due to the withholding of facts about known product defects which misled defendant's customers and ultimately the consumers. On the strict liability and negligence counts, the court submitted a special verdict allocating fault to Essex, Carl and the settling defendants. The jury returned verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs on all three theories of liability, allocating fifty percent of the fault to Essex, one percent to Carl and the remaining forty-nine percent to the settling defendants except Fisher Controls, which was found faultless.

The jury also returned special verdicts determining plaintiffs' actual and punitive damages. It found that Carl's sons, Todd and Brett, were not entitled to damages. Following a review of the posttrial motions, the trial court entered judgment in accordance with the jury's full assessment of both compensatory and punitive damages. The court, however, reduced the amount of compensatory damages awarded by the full amount received by plaintiffs in their pretrial settlements. Additionally, the court sustained Essex's motion to rescind a previous order involving the preservation of evidence and ordered that the documents Essex produced be returned to it.

On appeal defendant asserts error in (1) the failure to prove causation, (2) the submission of punitive damages, (3) permitting an improper argument, (4) the instruction on the burden of proof, and (5) the failure to apportion damages for fraud under the comparative fault statutes. On cross-appeal, plaintiffs maintain the trial court erred in allowing the pro tanto setoff and by enforcing a nondisclosure stipulation requiring them to return all copies of Essex's documents. As the trial court entered judgment on the basis of the special verdicts under the fraud claims, we shall discuss these issues under this theory of recovery.

I. Appellate procedure. We first address the subject of appellate procedure, which does not concern the merits of the appeal, but affects our decision-making process nonetheless. This case took several weeks to try and produced a substantial transcript along with a thirty-seven volume district court file. On appeal the parties prepared an appendix containing 4,522 pages. We believe that a substantial part of this appendix contains superfluous material. At the very least, the appendix includes much material not cited in the briefs. We have previously commented on this problem and need not elaborate here. See State v. Oppelt, 329 N.W.2d 17, 21 (Iowa 1983); Wilson-Sinclair Co. v. Griggs, 211 N.W.2d 133, 137 (Iowa 1973).

Additionally, defendant in both its statement of facts and in the body of its brief often did not cite to the appendix or to the transcript. The use of summarized evidence without citation to the appendix violates Iowa Rule of Appellate Procedure 14(a)(5), (g). Miller v. International Harvester Co., 246 N.W.2d 298, 306 (Iowa 1976). Courts should not be required to search the record to verify the facts and actions taken and are warranted in ignoring uncited contentions, especially in cases where the record is voluminous. See Mosher v. Snyder, 224 Iowa 896, 900, 276 N.W. 582, 583-84 (1937). The failure to edit and cite to the appendix needlessly increased our burden.

II. Causation. Defendant's first claim is based on plaintiffs' alleged failure to prove causation. Although the defendant's brief did not specify the source of the court's error, we assume it maintains the court erred by denying its motion for a new trial under Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure 244(f). This subsection allows the grant of a new trial if the verdict is not sustained by sufficient evidence. Plaintiffs respond by claiming that there is overwhelming proof that a defective gas control unit caused the explosion.

Plaintiffs' claim is based upon the allegation that defendant manufactured the defective gas control unit which was placed in plaintiffs' furnace. Defendant's product contained two internal valves, a manual valve and a safety valve. The purpose of these valves was to allow gas to flow through their chambers at the appropriate time, providing fuel for the furnace when it was operating, but closing and preventing gas from flowing when the furnace was not needed to produce heat or when the pilot light was off. Both valves had to be in an open position for gas to flow through them into the furnace.

Plaintiffs' expert concluded that gas had passed through both valves when the pilot was unlit, allowing gas to accumulate in the furnace area, exploding when the match was lit. Plaintiffs' expert theorized that defects caused both valves to be open, allowing gas to accumulate. He concluded that a stem on the manual valve had broken, resulting in a reading that the valve was closed when it actually was open. When the thermostat called for gas on a cold day it passed through the open valve. He also concluded that the internal safety valve failed because the safety reset lever had stuck.

In ruling upon motions for a new trial, the trial court has broad but not unlimited discretion. Iowa R.App.P. 14(f)(3). We will interfere only when the evidence clearly shows the trial court abused its discretion. Schall v. Lorenzen, 166 N.W.2d 795, 798 (Iowa 1969).

Defendant first asserts that the verdict must be reversed, because plaintiffs' theory of causation is based entirely on inadmissible expert testimony which was contradicted and wholly unsupported by the evidence. Defendant failed to specify the opinions it considered inadmissible nor did it cite to the appendix or transcript. Due to these failures, we conclude defendant waived consideration of this claim. We add, however, that our own review of the expert testimony indicates that defendant did not preserve error by failing to object to the opinion testimony at trial.

Defendant next urges that the expert witness' opinions were based on unsupported conclusions and on the assumption of facts lacking evidentiary support. Again, we have not been provided citations to the appendix and record, nor does our own search reveal timely and proper objections to opinions rendered. We decline defendant's contention.

Finally, defendant points to that portion of the expert's testimony where he opines that the gas control unit experienced dual simultaneous failures. It cites the case of Siegel v. Mazda Motor Corp., 835 F.2d 1475 (D.C.Cir.1987), as standing for the proposition that where plaintiffs' evidence is entirely circumstantial and there is no evidence of any prior or contemporaneous machine failure, the case can not go to the jury solely on experts' opinions of a product's defect. We believe this interpretation is an overly restrictive reading of Siegel. Additionally, we do not believe that the Siegel analysis would apply to the type of accident in this case. An automobile accident is totally unlike a gas explosion. Common experience tells us that most automobile accidents result from driver error. The accumulation of gas leading to...