Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55761/USCOURTS-ca9-13-55761-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Chrysler Group, LLC
Appellee
Pamela Joyce Moyet
Appellant
Karen Ann Pavoni
Appellant
Fred Arthur Scheid
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

KAREN ANN PAVONI; PAMELA

JOYCE MOYET; FRED ARTHUR

SCHEID,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

CHRYSLER GROUP, LLC,

Defendant-Appellee.

No. 13-55761

D.C. No.

2:11-cv-10513-

RGK-SP

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

R. Gary Klausner, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted May 7, 2015*

Pasadena, California

Filed June 17, 2015

Before: Harry Pregerson, Richard C. Tallman,

and Jacqueline H. Nguyen, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Pregerson

* The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision

without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

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2 PAVONI V. CHRYSLER GROUP

SUMMARY**

Strict Products Liability

The panel reversed the district court’s summary judgment

in favor of Chrysler Group, LLC and vacated the district

court’s award of costs in the plaintiffs’ diversity action

against Chrysler alleging strict products liability and other

theories concerning liability for deaths that occurred in a

2008 Chrysler Grand Caravan automobile.

The panel held that genuine issues of material fact existed

as to whether a “false park” defect in the Grand Caravan

caused the deaths of the plaintiffs’ mother and her husband. 

The panel also held that the district court incorrectly applied

the relevant California substantive law.

COUNSEL

Robert J. Nelson, Fabrice N. Vincent, Todd A. Walburg,

Jordan Elias, and Cecilia Han, Lieff Cabraser Heimann &

Bernstein, LLP, San Francisco, California, for PlaintiffsAppellants.

Philip R. Cosgrove, Hall R. Marston, and Ryan E. Cosgrove,

Sedgwick LLP, Los Angeles, California, for DefendantAppellee.

** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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PAVONI V. CHRYSLER GROUP 3

OPINION

PREGERSON, Circuit Judge:

Karen Pavoni, Pamela Moyet, and Fred Scheid

(“Plaintiffs”), three of the surviving children of Rose Coats,

appeal a summary judgment order in favor of Chrysler Group,

LLC (“Chrysler”), the corporate successor to the

manufacturer of the 2008 Chrysler Grand Caravan

automobile (“Grand Caravan”) involved in the deaths of Rose

and her husband, Roy Coats. Plaintiffs contend that Chrysler

is liable for the Coats’ deaths under the theories of strict

products liability, negligent design and failure to warn,

negligence, and wrongful death. We have jurisdiction under

28 U.S.C. § 1291. We reverse the grant of summary

judgment and remand to the district court for trial. We also

vacate the award of costs in light of our reversal of summary

judgment.1

I.

According to the district court’s order granting summary

judgment in favor of Chrysler, the facts in this case are as

follows: On Sunday, February 27, 2011, police found Rose,

age 75, and Roy, age 83, dead in the garage of their Menifee,

California home. Rose “was found pinned between the Car’s

open driver-side door and the inside of the garage door frame,

where she suffocated to death.” Roy “was found lying on the

garage floor directly beneath, and in front of her, with his left

ankle under the Car’s front driver-side tire. The Car ran over

him and fractured his right ankle.” The coroner reported that

1 The costs of this appeal are taxed against Chrysler Group, LLC. See

FRAP 39(a)(3).

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4 PAVONI V. CHRYSLER GROUP

Roy “died of hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular

disease, a natural cause of death.” No one witnessed the

accident.

Plaintiffs allege that a “false park” defect in the automatic

transmission of the Grand Caravan allowed Rose to exit the

vehicle, believing the car to be in park. The “false park”

defect caused the Grand Caravan to self-shift into reverse,

and begin moving backwards. While reversing, the Grand

Caravan pinned Rose between the driver’s door and the inside

frame of the garage door and struck Roy, causing him to have

a heart attack and fall to the ground.

On November 9, 2012, before the close of discovery and

before the expert disclosure deadline, Chrysler moved for

summary judgment. In their timely opposition to the motion

for summary judgment, Plaintiffs submitted a declaration

from their design defect expert, Gerald Rosenbluth, an

automobile defect investigator with 35 years of experience,

who concluded that there was a “false park” design defect in

the Grand Caravan and that defect more likely than not

caused the Coats’ deaths.

In his signed and sworn declaration, Plaintiffs’ expert

Rosenbluth explained the history of the alleged “false park”

defect in Chrysler vehicles,2the engineeringmechanics of the

2 Rosenbluth offered information from a 1990–91 National Highway

Traffic Safety Administration “false park” investigation documenting

several hundred “false park” reports against Chrysler from earlier

automobile models, including 212 incidents resulting in property damage,

109 resulting in injury, and seven resulting in fatalities. See Nat’l

HighwayTraffic SafetyAdmin., Engineering Analysis ClosingReport EA

91–010 (Dec. 31, 1991), http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/jaxrs/

download/doc/ACM11098066/INCR-EA91010-1787.pdf. Though

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PAVONI V. CHRYSLER GROUP 5

alleged “false park” defect, and how the alleged “false park”

defect can be avoided. Rosenbluth also tested the Coats’

Grand Caravan and found the “false park” defect, allowing

him to “place the gear shift selector in a position between

‘park’ and ‘reverse’ wherein the subject vehicle remained

motionless as if it were in ‘park’ for a period of time before

the transmission re-engaged hydraulic reverse.” Rosenbluth

concluded that more likely than not, to a reasonable degree of

scientific and technological certainty, a “false park” defect

caused the accident that resulted in Roy and Rose Coats’

deaths.

On December 5, 2012, the district court canceled a

scheduled December 10, 2012 hearingonDefendant’s motion

for summary judgment and took the summary judgment

motion under submission. On January 10, 2013, the district

court granted Chrysler’s motion for summary judgment,

finding that “the facts presented” by Plaintiffs and their

expert “are insufficient to establish the requisite causal

connection between Defendant’s actions and Decedents’

deaths.”

II.

We review a grant of summary judgment de novo. Clicks

Billiards, Inc. v. Sixshooters, Inc., 251 F.3d 1252, 1257 (9th

Cir. 2001). Viewing the evidence “as a whole” and “in the

investigators noted existence of “false park”inChrysler vehicles, the same

alleged defect was “characteristic of all vehicles tested . . . so no defect

was apparent in the subject Chrysler vehicles.” Id. at 10. Ultimately, the

NHTSA closed the investigation stating “[t]his investigation has not

disclosed the existence of a safety defect” in Chrysler vehicles as the

“number of incidents . . . in the context of the vehicle population and

exposure time, does not identify a trend of failure.” Id. at 15.

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6 PAVONI V. CHRYSLER GROUP

light most favorable to the party opposing the motion,” the

court “must determine whether there are any genuine issues

of material fact and whether the district court correctly

applied the relevant substantive law.” Matsushita Elec.

Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574, 587 (1986)

(citation omitted); Oliver v. Keller, 289 F.3d 623, 626 (9th

Cir. 2002). An issue of material fact is genuine “if the

evidence is such that a reasonable jury could return a verdict

for the nonmoving party.” Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc.,

477 U.S. 242, 248 (1986).

III.

Reviewing the record in the light most favorable to the

Plaintiffs, we find that genuine issues of material fact exist as

to whether a “false park” defect in the Coats’ Grand Caravan

caused the deaths of Roy and Rose Coats. We also find that

the district court incorrectly applied the relevant substantive

law.

Under California law, “[a] manufacturer may be held

strictly liable for placing a defective product on the market if

the plaintiff’s injury results from a reasonably foreseeable use

of the product.” Pannu v. Land Rover N. Am., Inc., 191 Cal.

App. 4th 1298, 1310 (2011); see also Greenman v. Yuba

Power Prods., Inc., 59 Cal. 2d 57, 62 (1963). The alleged

existence of the “false park” defect, documented in Chrysler

vehicles by the National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration and identified in the Grand Caravan through

Plaintiffs’ expert Rosenbluth’s testing, along with the details

of Roy and Rose Coats’ deaths, present genuine issues of

material fact that would allow a reasonable jury to conclude

that the “false park” defect was the legal cause of the accident

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PAVONI V. CHRYSLER GROUP 7

and their deaths.3See, e.g., Hinckley v. La Mesa R.V. Ctr.,

Inc., 205 Cal. Rptr. 22, 29 (Ct. App. 1984) (“[P]roof of the

malfunction of a part for which the manufacturer alone could

be responsible, may make out a sufficient case, and so may

expert testimony.”) (citing William L. Prosser, Law of Torts:

Products Liability, Proof § 103 (4th ed. 1971)).

3 Further supporting remand, we note that it is well-established under

California law that “a plaintiff is entitled to rely on circumstantial

evidence to establish the existence of a defect and that the defect caused

the injury. Such evidence may be established by expert testimony.” 

Grinnell v. Charles Pfizer & Co., 79 Cal. Rptr. 369, 375 (Ct. App. 1969)

(citations omitted). “[I]n a products liability case proof of [defect and

causation] by direct evidence is frequently impossible; a plaintiff may,

therefore, satisfy his burden of proving defect and causation by

circumstantial evidence.” Dimond v. Caterpillar Tractor Co., 134 Cal.

Rptr. 895, 901 (Ct. App. 1976).

The district court dismissed Plaintiffs’ expert Dr. Carly Ward’s

biomechanical accident analysis report, and declaration, filed with

Plaintiffs’ motion for reconsideration. Dr. Ward has a Ph.D. in

engineering, specializing in biomechanics and dynamics, from the

University of California, Los Angeles. She has served as a biomedical

engineering expert witness and consultant more than 360 times in state

and federal courts. After exhaustively analyzing the circumstantial

evidence, Dr. Ward concluded that “[b]oth deaths were caused by the

Dodge [Caravan] shifting into reverse from park.”

The district court decided that Dr. Ward’s report and declaration were

“not of such a magnitude to change the disposition of this case.” We

disagree. Under California law, Dr. Ward’s report and declaration

strengthen Rosenbluth’s conclusions and support reversing the district

court’s summary judgment order. See Thai v. Stang, 263 Cal. Rptr. 202,

207 (Ct. App. 1989) (finding that causation determinations should not be

taken away fromthe jury except where no reasonable person could dispute

“the absence of causality”).

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8 PAVONI V. CHRYSLER GROUP

We reverse the summary judgment order of the district

court and remand for further proceedings consistent with this

opinion. We also vacate the award of costs for

reconsideration in light of our reversal of summary judgment. 

See Fed. R. Civ. Pro. 54(d)(1).

REVERSED and REMANDED in part; and

VACATED in part.

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