JACKSON, Miss. (Legal Newsline) - Hyundai Motors won reversal of a $10.5 million verdict in a Mississippi car crash after uncovering a trail of evidence worthy of a John Grisham novel, including a “jury consultant” who staged tent revivals that drew in potential jurors before the trial and a chief justice whose clerk overheard an incriminating discussion in a seafood restaurant suggesting jury tampering.
The Mississippi Supreme Court, in a March 11 decision, ruled that the Coahoma County trial against Hyundai was fatally tainted after the auto manufacturer showed that Carey Sparks, described by one witness as “a reverend or a bishop, a man of God of some sort,” had lied about being employed by plaintiff lawyers during a trial over a car crash that killed three people.
Relatives of the victims claimed a Hyundai Excel that crossed a highway centerline and crashed head-on into a Lincoln Continental was defective and dangerous.
“The facts developed in this record threaten the public’s confidence in our system of justice,” wrote Chief Justice Michael Randolph in an en banc decision joined by four other judges. “We find that this case is permeated by actual deception upon the trial court, which led to plaintiffs obtaining a favorable ruling. Such improper acts of misconduct leave a indelible stain on these proceedings.”
Jurors returned the verdict in favor of Ola Mae Applewhite and other relatives after an 11-day trial in September 2014. Hyundai immediately moved for a mistrial and later asked the court to investigate allegations that Sparks, who attended the trial daily, had been hired by plaintiff attorney Dennis Sweet III.
The trial judge refused Hyundai’s request for an investigation but the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed in 2017, ordering the judge to conduct hearings. (It was actually the second trip to the state high court, which overturned a 2008 plaintiff verdict for $4.5 million on discovery grounds.)
Sparks initially denied working for Sweet. But during the investigation Hyundai uncovered canceled checks and other evidence showing he’d been paid during the trial. Witnesses including six attorneys also told the court that Sparks had a close friend whose aunt was on the jury and said he “had knowledge of discussions of the jurors.” Despite this evidence, the trial judge ruled there was no evidence of jury tampering.
Hyundai learned about Sparks after its lawyers spoke with attorneys who described his role in another case in Jackson. One of those attorneys later testified Sparks “told me …Sweet hires him to show up a couple of weeks before a trial in an area and preach revivals and get to know the people.”
“The best thing that you can do for a plaintiff’s attorney is to go preach on the revival circuit shortly before trial,” the witness quoted Sparks as saying. “We go around sometimes to communities before these trials begin and …set up a tent and have a barbecue or a fish fry.”
Another lawyer recalled Sparks told her “that they had juries that would come in, and women would cover their mouth and say, `That’s the preacher that preached at our revival this weekend.’”
That witness also said Sparks told her he’d recently worked “on a case up in Clarksdale where it should have been a $21 million verdict, but it was a $10 million verdict.” Sparks told the lawyer there were a lot of “uneducated people” including “a lady on the jury that couldn’t count.”
“They spent two days trying to teach her how to count, and that just never worked out,” Sparks allegedly told the other lawyer.
The plaintiffs in the Clarksdale Hyundai case sought $7 million per accident victim, or $21 million, but the jury only awarded them $3.5 million per victim. Sparks reportedly attributed it to jurors deciding “people didn’t need to get any richer, which is why they wouldn’t give them $21 million.”
Sparks also allegedly bragged about a friend whose aunt was on the jury, although when asked about it in a 2015 court hearing Sparks said he only spoke to him after the trial was over. Over the course of seven more hearings that testimony was undercut by witnesses including a lawyer who said Sparks had bragged about having a friend on the Applewhite jury and a former county sheriff – also a plaintiffs’ jury consultant -- who said Sparks told him he’d “picked a good jury” in the case. The former sheriff later refused to sign an affidavit, saying plaintiff lawyers had told him not to.
As late as 2018 Sparks continued to deny he’d ever worked for Sweet’s firm. When confronted with the canceled checks, he recanted his prior testimony and admitted Sweet had hired him to work on numerous lawsuits including the Applewhite case, and had organized community events. By they time Sparks changed his story, however, Hyundai was unable to obtain cellphone records and other documents to investigate his communications with the plaintiff lawyers. The friend whose aunt was on the Applewhite jury declined to describe his relationship with Sparks, answering “I know him” to every question.
A clerk for Chief Justice Randolph later said she overheard Sparks talking about the case at the Bonefish Grill in Madison, Miss. The clerk recused herself from the case. But her boss rejected calls by plaintiff lawyers to recuse himself. Since Sparks’ lies were already corroborated by numerous witnesses, the judge wrote in a footnote, there was no reason to consider his clerk a material witness.
Hyundai sought to question jurors about whether Sparks had influenced them but the trial judge rejected most of the defense’s questions, including any discussion of how the jury reached a decision on damages. Only two jurors said they recognized Sparks even though he was in the courtroom throughout the trial and they all denied outside influence.
The aunt of Sparks’ friend said she didn’t recognize Sparks and didn’t discuss the trial with her nephew. But she admitted under questioning that her nephew had called her the morning before his deposition and the trial judge didn’t ask her about text messages she exchanged with the nephew around the time he was visited by defense lawyers.
Supporting reversal, the majority cited a 1999 decision in which it reversed a verdict where General Motors had hired a mailman as a jury consultant, saying the fact he delivered jury summonses might have allowed the company to obtain “otherwise protected information about the makeup of the jury.”
In this case, the majority ruled, Hyundai’s right to a fair trial was compromised by deception that prevented the company from obtaining records and other evidence to determine whether the jury had been influenced.
“Our legal system is the envy of the world,” Judge Randolph wrote for the majority. “We recognize that it is not without blemish or imperfection. While such blemishes or imperfections generally are insufficient to require reversals, glaring wounds caused by an assault on our treasured judicial system and juries are another matter. The rule of law remains our polestar. We must protect our judicial system from such attacks.”
Judge James Kitchens dissented. He agreed the case “does raise concerns of attorney misconduct,” but said they should be handled by the Mississippi Bar.
“Notwithstanding the majority’s tone of outrage, the evidence is much too tenuous to require the extreme step of invalidating the jury’s lawful verdict and ordering this aged case to be tried again,” he wrote. “A common denominator in this case is that no one who interacted with Sparks found him to be the least bit credible.”
The dissenting judge went on to cite the plaintiff attorney Sweet, who testified “you have to have a little bit of stereotype of black people in you to even give it credibility, that you can go to some revival somewhere and black people going to get the message out in minister out talking about I’m frying fish and holding revivals to win cases, it’s insulting. It’s not true and it’s insulting.”
The high court stopped short of dismissing the case with prejudice, meaning it couldn’t be refiled, because it said there was no evidence the plaintiffs knew about Sparks or his involvement.