VENTURA, Calif. (Legal Newsline) – A $30 million verdict in noneconomic damages is a miscarriage of justice, a California appeals court has ruled.
The Second Appellate District’s Jan. 20 decision vacates the verdict and sends the lawsuit over a fatal car accident back to Ventura County Superior Court for a new trial limited to determining a new amount.
The trial court erred when it excluded evidence of the comparative fault of defendants that settled before trial.
“(N)o substantial evidence appears to support the amount of the damages award, an amount that shocks the conscience and appears to have been influenced by the misconduct and improper argument of respondents’ counsel,” Justice Kenneth Yegan wrote.
In 2014, Anita Newcomb made an illegal U-turn on SR 126 as she left a fruit stand. Jocelyne Plascencia had to swerve to avoid Newcomb’s car but lost control of hers.
She crashed into a tractor-trailer driven being driven by Charles Deese, who had parked it on the side of the road because he smelled hot engine oil.
He found no emergency though, when he looked under the hood, and left the truck to buy strawberries at the fruit stand. Jocelyne struck the tractor-trailer, was airlifted to a hospital and died a month later.
The resulting wrongful death lawsuit resulted in a $1.5 million settlement with the State of California, a $115,000 settlement with Newcomb and the owner of the car she was driving and an $825,000 settlement with the owner of the fruit stand parking lot.
The claims against Deese went to trial, where the jury was told to only consider the comparative fault of Newcomb and not the State and fruit stand.
The jury found Newcomb 60% at fault and Deese 40% at fault and awarded $30 million to Jocelyne’s parents, leaving Deese with a $14.4 million bill. They are represented by attorneys at The Homampour Law Firm, Law Offices of Hamed Yazdanpanah and The Enrlich Law Firm.
It was their closing arguments that the appeals court criticized, ruling that they violated a pretrial order prohibiting them from invoking the Golden Rule.
The attorney handling closing told jurors, “You can’t stone him to death” but you can “make him pay.” He also told jurors to imagine Jocelyne was their daughter and “some guy broke a rule that he knew he couldn’t break… and your daughter is taken away.”
He accused Deese’s lawyer of lying and delaying a settlement for five years, while calling his defense a “fraud.”
“This was misconduct and it denied appellants a fair trial,” Yegan wrote.