By: Max Mitchell- Bureau Chief, Lega Intelligencer/Law.com

November 15, 2023

The filing comes on the heels of a motion for delay damages that seeks to raise the total award to more than $1 billion, and at a time when both sides are expanding their appellate firepower.

The car maker that was slammed with a nearly $1 billion verdict last month in a case over an allegedly dangerously designed seatbelt says improper jury instructions and inflammatory statements from the plaintiffs counsel necessitate a new trial in the case.

Mitsubishi Motors filed a post-trial motion late last week in Amagasu v. Fred Beans Family of Dealerships, which resulted in a $976 million verdict that a Philadelphia jury handed up on Oct. 30.

The 28-page motion raises numerous challenges regarding how the trial played out, but said one of the biggest problems with the trial was that jurors were not given proper instructions on crashworthiness. The motion further said that, ”Whether by accident or design, plaintiffs’ counsel misled the court” into omitting a portion of the jury instruction saying the plaintiff must prove that the defect caused more damages than would likely have been caused by the original impact.

“The result of this misconduct was that plaintiffs’ counsel both seemingly complied with the court’s wish to issue only standard instructions and omitted any instruction on crashworthiness in a classic crashworthiness case,” Mitsubishi said in the motion. “That manipulation of the court and the jury instruction, which lowered the plaintiffs’ burden of proof, can be remedied only by the award of a new trial.”

Stewart Eisenberg of Eisenberg, Rothweiler, Winkler, Eisenberg & Jeck, who was part of the team representing the plaintiffs, said those claims related to the jury instructions are not accurate.

“We disagree with everything they have filed, and we will have a complete response on the record,” he said. “We believe in the jury’s verdict.”

More specifically, Eisenberg Rothweiler’s Dan Sherry Jr., who was on the trial team, said the plaintiffs filed their proposed jury charge 10 days before the final charging conference, that the defendants stated to the court during conference that the proposal was the standard charge, and never contended that the charge was incomplete.

“Mitsubishi’s contention is outrageous and flatly against both what was submitted pretrial and what Mitsubishi’s own counsel stated thereafter at the charge conference,” Sherry said.

The filing comes on the heels of a motion for delay damages from the plaintiffs that seeks to raise the total award to more than $1 billion, and at a time when both sides are expanding their appellate firepower.

Starting in early November, the plaintiffs, Francis and Soomi Amagasu, have brought on Charles “Chip” Becker of Kline & Specter, as well as solo practitioner Howard Bashman, both of whom have extensive appellate practices that regularly put them before the state Superior and Supreme courts. Mitsubishi has also hired John Hare, chair of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin’s appellate practice, and Lamb McErlane’s Maureen McBride. Both Hare and McBride are also among the state’s top appellate practitioners.

Trial counsel for the Amagasus was Wesley Ball and Kyle Farrar of Farrar & Ball, as well as Sherry, Nancy Winkler and Jessica Colliver of Eisenberg Rothweiler. Mitsubishi was represented at trial by William Conroy of Campbell Conroy & O’Neil.

The case, which was tried before Judge Sierra Thomas Street of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, focused on arguments that Mitsubishi failed to properly test the safety of its seatbelt restraint system in its 1992 model 3000GT sports car.

According to the plaintiffs, the seatbelt had been improperly designed to give four inches of slack, which, in Francis Amagasu’s case, allowed him to strike his head during a collision, causing him to become quadriplegic. The plaintiffs further argued that Mitsubishi failed to perform necessary rollover testing on the seatbelt safety system.

The jury eventually returned a $176.5 million compensatory damages verdict, followed by an $800 million punitive damages award.

In their post-trial motion, which was filed Nov. 9, Mitsubishi argued that the court should have allowed them to introduce evidence that the safety belt complied with the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and that the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden of proof on numerous elements. The motion further contended that plaintiffs’ counsel made inflammatory remarks to the jury asking them to punish the company for hypothetical injuries of people unrelated to the case.

As evidence that the jury was inflamed by the comments, the motion pointed to the fact that the punitive damages award came after about 30 minutes of deliberations.

“A new trial on all issues is required because the size of the verdict and the brevity of the jury’s deliberations on damages indicates passion and prejudice, which tainted the entire verdict,” the motion said.

In a statement, Hare said, “Mitsubishi Motors respectfully disagrees with the jury’s verdict and its grossly excessive awards of both compensatory and punitive damages. For the legal and evidentiary reasons set forth in Mitsubishi Motors’ post-trial motions, it strongly believes that the verdict must be overturned.”

Read the article here on Law.com.