Case Summaries
| Publication year | 1993 |
| Pages | 46 |
| Citation | Vol. 6 No. 6 Pg. 46 |
June, 1993
Clark R. Nielsen, J.
PROCEDURE AND REVIEW, DIRECTED VERDICT; EVIDENCE
The trial court erred in granting a directed verdict and in preventing plaintiff's products liability and negligence claims to go before the jury. A directed verdict will be reversed when the evidence taken in a light most favorable to the appellant is sufficient to permit a reasonable jury to find for the appellant.
The plaintiff's decedent was killed when his General Motors truck crashed in Salina Canyon. Plaintiffs alleged the truck had an unreasonably dangerous design and manufacturing defect that caused the accident. At trial, experts testified regarding the cause of the accident and the alleged design defects in the steering and underside of the truck. However, the trial court refused to admit evidence of the recall and re-design of a separate model vehicle. The Court directed a verdict in favor of the defendants without allowing the jury to consider the defect allegations.
The Utah Supreme Court viewed little real probative value in the evidence of the recall and re-design of an entirely different vehicle with a different steering gear layout. The minimal value of such evidence could not outweigh the substantial risk of unfair prejudice by leading jurors to conclude that since General Motors had remedied a possible steering gear layout design in one model that it should have done so in an entirely different model with an entirely different layout. Because of this imbalance, the court was unable to conclude that the exclusion of evidence was beyond the bounds of reasonability. The evidence ruling was affirmed.
However, because plaintiff's expert testified that at the time the truck was sold it had a defect or defective condition which made it unreasonably dangerous to the user, the trial court erred in granting directed verdict and taking the decision away from the jury. A directed verdict will be reviewed similarly to a summary judgment as set forth in Butterfield v. Okubo, 831 P.2d 97(Utah 1992).
Nay v. General Motors Corp., 210 Utah Adv. Rep. 3 (J. Zimmerman)
GOVERNMENTAL IMMUNITY, DUTY
The Supreme Court affirmed the summary judgment in favor of the defendants financial commissioners in their personal capacity. Plaintiff had claimed that defendants were grossly negligent in carrying out their statutory duties in regulating and monitoring Grove Finance. To hold a government agent personally liable for gross negligence, a plaintiff cannot recover ! for the breach of a duty owed to the general |...
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