Brown v. Cartwright, AC 43415

203 Conn.App. 490

249 A.3d 59

Ryan K. BROWN, Jr.

v.David CARTWRIGHT et al.

AC 43415

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued December 1, 2020

Officially released March 30, 2021

Fredrik Thor Holth, for the appellant (plaintiff).

Robert W. Maxwell, pro hac vice, with whom was David W. Case, for the appellees (defendants).

Lavine, Alvord and Cradle, Js.^*

LAVINE, J.

The plaintiff, Ryan K. Brown, Jr., appeals from the judgment of the trial court, following a trial to a jury, rendered in favor of the defendants, David Cartwright, Ironhorse Auto, LLC, operating as Central Hyundai of Plainfield, and Hyundai Motor America, Inc.¹ On appeal, the plaintiff challenges the propriety of the verdict on three grounds: (1) the court's failure to timely deliver the plaintiff's exhibits to the jury deprived him of a fair verdict; (2) the jury did not follow the court's instructions to consider all the evidence; and (3) opposing counsel's statements during cross-examination unfairly prejudiced the jury. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts and procedural history are relevant to this appeal. The plaintiff purchased a 2013 Hyundai Elantra (Elantra) from the defendants on September 16, 2013. Early in the morning of September 29, 2013, the plaintiff was driving from Farmington to his home in Groton. The plaintiff alleged that while he was driving in the left lane of Interstate 95, the left front wheel of the Elantra fractured, resulting in a single car crash that caused the plaintiff serious injuries. The plaintiff filed a product liability action against the defendants pursuant to General Statutes § 52-240b and the Connecticut Product Liability Act, General Statutes § 52-572m et seq.² The plaintiff alleged that a manufacturing defect in the wheel was the proximate cause of the crash.

The case was tried to a jury from June 26 to July 3, 2019. At trial, the parties disputed the cause and nature of the wheel fracture, including how it occurred and whether the wheel fully detached from the Elantra, and the extent of the injuries the plaintiff suffered.

Following closing arguments, the court instructed the jury not to begin deliberations until they had received all of the exhibits, the verdict form, and the interrogatories. After the jury had retired to the deliberation room, the following exchange between the court and counsel transpired:

"The Court: All right. Counsel, have you had an opportunity to go through the exhibits and make sure that the only exhibits going to the jury for deliberation are full exhibits?

"[The Plaintiff's Counsel]: Yes, Your Honor.

"[The Defendants’ Counsel]: Yes, Your Honor.

"The Court: All right. If you wouldn't mind approaching the bench? The only change that was made to the jury form was adding the jury foreperson and the date."

Following a brief conference with counsel, the court stated that the charge and exhibits "are going to go to the jury along with the exhibits, and our clerk will let the jury know that they may begin deliberations, and they need to pick a foreperson.... And then this court will stand in recess."

During its deliberations, the jury answered "no" to the following interrogatory: "Was the subject wheel defective because it did not comply with design specifications or performance standards?" The jury then notified the court that it had reached a verdict. The jury returned to the courtroom and the clerk read the jury's verdict finding in favor of the defendants. The court accepted the jury's verdict.

On July 9, 2019, the plaintiff filed a motion to set aside the verdict and for a new trial (motion to set aside) on the grounds that defendants’ counsel had inflamed the jury by attempting to read from documents not in evidence and that the jury had failed to follow the court's instructions. With respect to his first ground, the plaintiff alleged in relevant part that "[the defendants’ counsel] ... read aloud from and described information to the jury derived from documents or sources not properly in evidence for the sole purpose of inflaming the emotions of the jury or creating undue partiality ... and did so inflame the emotions of the jury or create partiality." With respect to the second claim in his motion to set aside, the plaintiff alleged in relevant part:

"6. The jury failed to follow the court's instructions and deliberated without reviewing, considering and/or having all of the evidence properly before it and therefore, resulted in a verdict based upon ignorance, partiality, speculation, mistake, conjecture, or a combination of two or more thereof.

"7. The jury failed to follow the court's instructions and deliberated without reviewing, considering and/or having all of the evidence properly before it and therefore, resulted in a verdict based upon misconduct, failure to follow the law, or both."

The defendants objected to the motion to set aside on the grounds that the statements of their counsel were not harmful and the jury verdict was fully consistent with the law and the weight of the evidence. The plaintiff replied to the objection, alleging that "due to an error, all of the plaintiff's trial exhibits remained in the courtroom until at least 4:30 p.m., although the jury had been excused a substantial amount of time earlier to deliberate. Because the plaintiff's exhibits had not been delivered to the jury in a timely manner, at 4:28 p.m., the undersigned contacted the clerk's office by telephone after searching the jury clerk and case flow coordinator's offices for available staff to alert the judge. At least several minutes passed following the conclusion of the call to the clerk's office and, thereafter, the plaintiff's exhibits were delivered to the jury at approximately 4:35 p.m. The verdict was reached and the [court] was back on the record for rendering and acceptance of the verdict at 4:47 p.m. Therefore, in order to have followed the court's instructions as described above, the jury must have elected a foreperson, reviewed thousands of pages of documents and deliberated, all within a span of ten minutes. This is not only unlikely, but impossible." (Footnotes omitted.)

The court heard the plaintiff's motion to set aside on August 13, 2019, at which time, counsel for the plaintiff testified that the defendants’ exhibits were timely delivered to the jury, but the plaintiff's exhibits were not. According to the plaintiff's counsel, the jury retired to deliberate at "approximately four o'clock ...." On direct examination by his law partner, the plaintiff's counsel testified as follows:

"Q.: All right. And then what came to your attention relative to your exhibits—plaintiff's exhibits?

"[The Plaintiff's Counsel]: [We] were waiting in ... the courtroom for approximately half an hour. The defendants’ exhibits were taken into the jury room at about 4:28.³

"I started to look for the jury clerk, as well as the case flow coordinator because I could not find our clerk, and I did not want to walk into the back hall where the jurors were. I went to the jury clerk's office. I went to the case flow coordinator's office. Those offices were vacant and the lights were off.

"I came back to the courtroom. Our exhibits were still here, the plaintiff's exhibits. I called the clerk's office downstairs.... That call lasted about a minute, and then a clerk ... came up within several minutes, took in two trips, our exhibits—the plaintiff's exhibits into the jury room to deliberate for its deliberations.

"The jury then returned with a verdict at approximately 4:40 to 4:45 p.m. And then we went back on the record at 4:47.

"Q.: So again, how many minutes from the time that the plaintiffs’ exhibits were submitted to the jury and the decision was rendered?

"[The Plaintiff's Counsel]: Approximately ten, if that many."

The plaintiff's counsel also testified that his exhibits "in total were several thousand pages and the exhibits on the specifications in liability alone would have been hundreds of pages ...." On cross-examination by the defendants’ counsel, the plaintiff's counsel testified that his exhibits were delivered to the jury at 4:35 p.m., and the court went back on the record twelve minutes later. He admitted that he did not have any direct evidence that the jury had reached a verdict before the delivery of his exhibits, "other than the inference itself."

The court denied the motion to set aside in a memorandum of decision on September 12, 2019. The court first stated that "counsel's questioning during cross-examination was not so prejudicial as to deny the plaintiff a fair trial and, further, curative instructions given immediately following objections raised by [the] plaintiff's counsel were sufficient to cure any potential prejudice to the plaintiff." The court rejected the plaintiff's argument that the "rendering of a verdict in this case within ten minutes is impossible and in fact, indicative of juror misconduct in failing to consider all the evidence and/or indicative of undue prejudice induced during the cross-examination of the plaintiff." The court explained that it could not infer misconduct from the length of the jury's deliberation and that it could not set aside the verdict when there was evidence supporting the jury's finding.⁴ With regard to the plaintiff's claim that the jury failed "to follow the court's instructions and/or deliberated without reviewing, considering and/ or having all the evidence before it," the court explained that there was nothing before it to demonstrate that the jurors improperly discussed the case among themselves prior to deliberations, that there was no dispute that the jurors had all the exhibits before them prior to indicating that they had reached a verdict, and that the jury was allowed to credit the testimony of the defendants’ expert witness. The court rendered judgment on the verdict at that time. This appeal followed.

We first set forth the well-known standard of review. "[T]he proper appellate standard of review when considering the...