Chrysler fails to reverse $3 million punitive award.

• Author: Sanders, Carol McHugh

In another case involving a much smaller punitive damages award, Chrysler lost out before the Sixth Circuit in its bid to overturn a jury verdict. Clark v. Chrysler Corp., 310 F.3d 461 (6th Cir. 2002).

The jury award in this case also arose from a fatal crash in which Charles Clark was driving his Dodge Ram track when he was hit in October 1993 by a state police car. It collided with the left front fender of Clark's truck, causing the vehicles to rotate and "side slap" after impact. Clark, who was not wearing a seat belt, was ejected from the truck, thrown onto the grass median and died six hours later from the injuries. Neither the police officer nor Clark's two passengers were seriously injured.

Clark's wife alleged in her products liability suit that Chrysler's lock latch on the Ram's doors was defectively designed, as it did not hold the door shut during the accident. The jury found Chrysler and Clark were each 50 percent at fault, so that the jury's $471,258 compensatory award was cut in half in the judgment for Clark, while its $3 million in punitive damages stood.

Affirming, the Sixth Circuit determined in an opinion by Judge Oliver that both of Clark's expert witnesses demonstrated that their scientific testimony was sufficiently reliable under standards set in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993). Clark's lock latch expert testified that the 1992 Dodge Ram did not have a state-of-the-art or state-of-the-industry lock latch. He referred to several other lock latch examples in the industry that were state-of-the-art at the time that Clark's pickup truck was manufactured. His opinion that the lock latch was defective and unreasonably dangerous, the court determined, was based on a sufficiently reliable foundation, including his technical knowledge of automobile door latch systems, his extensive testing of door latch bypass failure, his familiarity with the Chrysler K latch and his examination of the latch in Clark's truck, as well as other K latches identical to the one involved in Clark's case.

Likewise, Clark's accident reconstruction expert also demonstrated sufficient reliability under the Daubert standards. That expert testified that the structure to which the truck's door attached when it closed, called a B-pillar, is the skeleton...