FRANKFORT, Ky. (Legal Newsline) - A year after its initial ruling, the Kentucky Supreme Court announced it won't change its decision to order a new trial in the case of a man who fell out of a tree stand.
Kevin O'Bryan sued several defendants, including manufacturer Primal Vantage, after the polypropylene straps that secured the stand to a tree broke and he fell to the ground. A Jefferson County jury awarded him $18.5 million - an amount cut in half when they apportioned half of the fault to O'Bryan.
But Primal appealed, arguing O'Bryan's lawyer shouldn't have been able to introduce "a wealth" of evidence of 78 other incidents with the product to pursue the lone remaining claim: Failure to warn. Later in the trial, the judge found the evidence inadmissible but continued rather than declare a mistrial.
On Aug. 18, 2022, the Supreme Court sided with Primal and ordered a new trial. O'Bryan asked the court to reconsider but the court refused on Aug. 24, 2023, finding the trial judge failed to screen the other-incidents evidence before allowing it to be presented.
"The trial court abused its discretion and abandoned its role as evidentiary gatekeeper by allowing substantial amounts of evidence of other incidents to be presented to the jury, threatening that a mistrial would likely be declared if this evidence was found inadmissible, ruling near the end of trial that the other-instances evidence was indeed inadmissible, and then failing properly to admonish the jury to ignore the inadmissible other-incidents evidence during its deliberation," the decision says.
Ann Oldfather, Sean Deskins and Michael Hasken represented O'Bryan at trial, while Jeff Adamson and Paul Casi III represented his ex-wife. They argued on appeal the directed verdict for Primal on design-defect claims cured any prejudice of the evidence.
"But Kevin's argument fails to recognize that notice and knowledge of an unsafe condition may be relevant to a failure-to-warn theory," the Supreme Court wrote.