Can an Attorney be Sanctioned for Raising the Victims’ Seatbelt Use When the Judge Says Not to?
Sanctions were at issue in an appeal arising from an automobile accident where a driver and his passenger both died after a Ford truck went out of control and rolled over. The plaintiffs (the victims’ surviving children and co-executors of their estates) filed a product liability action against Ford Motor Company and others. The first trial in this case ended in a mistrial after the trial court found that Ford deliberately violated several of the court’s orders.
As sanctions, the trial court declared that several facts were established as a matter of law and required Ford and its attorneys to pay jury costs. After a second trial, a jury awarded the plaintiffs over $24 million in compensatory damages and $1.7 billion in punitive damages. Ford appealed the trial court’s sanctions order.
Background
On April 3, 2014, the decedent was driving his 2002 Ford F-250 Crew Cab truck when it rolled over, killing him and his passenger. In July 2016, the plaintiffs filed an action against Ford and others in state court in Gwinnett County, asserting claims for product liability and punitive damages. Before the first trial, the trial court granted several of the plaintiffs’ motions in limine, which excluded any evidence or reference to the victims’ alleged improper seatbelt use (the “Seatbelt Order”). Before opening arguments, the trial court warned the parties that attempting to obtain a mistrial by “mischief or an intentional willful act” would result in “very serious sanctions.”
The plaintiffs filed a motion for sanctions, requesting that the trial court strike Ford’s answer. They argued that “Ford deliberately procured a mistrial by willfully and repeatedly violating” the trial court’s orders as a strategy to obtain a “compromise verdict” and violation of the trial court’s Seatbelt Order. The motion also requested, as a sanction, that the trial court order that certain facts related to the design of the truck, Ford’s willfulness, and the cause of the victims’ injuries and deaths be taken as established by law during the next trial.
Ford opposed the motion, but the trial court sanctioned Ford for its conduct at the trial. The court declared a mistrial because of Ford and its lawyers’ “willful violation” of one of the court’s orders prohibiting their expert’s opinion on the specific cause of death. The court found that this violation was the “culmination of Ford’s continuing disregard for several pre-trial evidentiary rulings,” including the Seatbelt Order. The court found that Ford violated that order by “deliberately injecting the idea of seatbelt use, as relevant, at least twice, before the jury.”
The trial court also noted that it told the parties numerous times, that Ford would not be allowed to insinuate that the victim was at fault, or that he was impaired at the time of the accident. Nevertheless, Ford’s attorney raised a post-mortem toxicology-testing report on the victim’s blood in front of the jury, suggesting that the results showed that the driver had alcohol in his system. This example of Ford’s willful disregard of the court orders was particularly troubling, the trial judge said, because the toxicology report showed that there was no alcohol in the victim’s blood.
The court found that Ford and its counsel’s actions showed manifest bad faith and cited its inherent authority to impose sanctions against a party and its attorney to compel obedience to its orders and to control the conduct of its officers in furtherance of justice. The trial court expressly found “it appropriate to hold both counsel and Ford responsible for the necessary sanctions.”
In the first phase of the second trial, the trial judge instructed the jury that in the prior trial, Ford violated several of its rulings as to the admissibility of evidence, requiring the trial court to declare a mistrial. As a result, the trial court stated that certain matters were “deemed established” in language that closely tracked the sanctions order.
As a result, the jury awarded the plaintiffs $16 million for wrongful death, $8 million for pain and suffering, $22,500 for the totaled truck, $16,000 for funeral expenses, and $1.7 billion in punitive damages against Ford. The jury also apportioned 70% of fault to Ford and 30% to an auto mechanic. The trial court entered a final judgment of $1,716,826,950 against Ford. Ford filed multiple post-judgment motions, including a motion for new trial and a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, which the trial court denied.
Did Ford Violate the Judge’s Seatbelt Order?
In the Seatbelt Order, the trial court cited O.C.G.A. § 40-8-76.1(d), which states in part:
The failure of an occupant of a motor vehicle to wear a seat safety belt in any seat of a motor vehicle which has a seat safety belt or belts shall not be considered evidence of negligence or causation, shall not otherwise be considered by the finder of fact on any question of liability … and shall not be evidence used to diminish any recovery for damages …
Presiding Judge M. Yvette Miller of the Georgia Court of Appeals wrote that the issue of whether the victims were wearing their seatbelts during the accident was contested. Ford sought to introduce evidence based on photographs allegedly showing one or more occupant’s shoulder belt routed under their right arm after the accident. The trial court didn’t make an evidentiary determination, the judge said, about whether the evidence showed that the seatbelts were improperly tucked. Instead, it ruled that evidence that the victims weren’t wearing the shoulder part of their seatbelts must be excluded because the statute indicated that multiple belts may be available and the non-use of “one of more of these belts” contemplates a case where, as here, there was evidence that one of the belts was not worn. The trial court therefore entered the Seatbelt Order, that forbade Ford from referencing the possibility that the victims weren’t wearing the shoulder portions of their seatbelts.
In a separate order, the trial court ruled that it would allow Ford’s experts to refer to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (”NHTSA”) data to testify as to the rate of rollover incidents resulting in serious injury or fatality, based upon information compiled by the NHTSA . The trial court later ruled that it would allow the crash data in opening arguments. In its opening, Ford’s attorney displayed a graphic with statistics about injuries in rollover accidents compiled by the NHTSA. That graphic stated that 97.4 % of “belted occupants” avoided serious injuries in rollovers.
Later, the plaintiffs’ attorney cross-examined Ford’s expert witness, who sad that in 97.4% of rollover crashes, accident victims had no serious injuries if they used their seat belts. The plaintiffs’ counsel didn’t contemporaneously object to this comment, but later, outside of the presence of the jury, he asked the trial court to admonish the witness not to say anything again implying the victims weren’t wearing seatbelts.
The trial court stated, “So I’ll be — I’ll just admit to you, I didn’t hear him say it. So if he said it, it was fleeting in the Court’s ear. We’re going to stay away from it.”
The trial court then instructed the witness not to make any more references to seatbelts. But during Ford’s subsequent cross-examination of the plaintiffs’ expert witness, their attorney referenced the statistic that studies have shown that 97.4% suffered no serious injuries while they’re wearing seatbelts. But again, the plaintiffs’ attorney did not contemporaneously object to the question or testimony.
On appeal, Ford contended that it didn’t violate the Seatbelt Order during its opening because the trial court permitted Ford to use the NHTSA crash data. Judge Miller admitted that was true. Nor did Ford violate the Seatbelt Order when its expert stated “[i]t is a good thing, and good for them using their safety belts,” as that was his answer to a direct question by the plaintiffs’ attorney about whether it was “a good thing” that 97.4% of belted occupants suffer no serious injuries in rollover crashes. Moreover, the witness didn’t comment upon whether the victims used a seatbelt. Likewise, Ford didn’t comment upon the victims’ seatbelt use when it cross-examined the plaintiffs’ expert witness. As a result, Judge Miller and the Court of Appeals concluded that the trial court abused its discretion by finding that Ford violated the Seatbelt Order.
The Court of Appeals vacated the portion of the Sanctions Order that established the facts for retrial and left only certain issues. The judgment was affirmed in part, reversed in part, vacated in part, and the was case remanded. Ford Motor Company v. Hill, 2024 Ga. App. LEXIS 466 (Ga. App. November 1, 2024).
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Note about seatbelts and evidence of the use or non-use of them at trial
Under new Georgia law, SB 68, evidence of whether an occupant was wearing his seatbelt at the time of the accident is now admissible.