Opinion ID: 776872
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Ford's Theory of the Accident

Text: 67 The district court also found that Ford had proffered an alternative scenario that was consistent with the evidence offered by third parties and received support from plaintiff's own witness Pope and the NHTSA governmental study. Jarvis, 69 F.Supp.2d at 602. Ford's scenario suggests that Jarvis, unfamiliar with her new minivan, started it 68 unaware that her father had set the parking brake..., put her foot on the accelerator thinking it to be on the brake, and was startled when the engine started to race against the force of the parking brake. Continuing to believe that her foot was on the brake and not on the accelerator, plaintiff was unable to stop the car. 69 Id. 70 The record as a whole, viewed in the light most favorable to Jarvis, supplies little evidence to support Ford's theory of the accident. While we agree that some evidence in the record is consistent with this theory, judgment as a matter of law demands far more. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a) (requiring for judgment as a matter of law that there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for [the non-moving] party on that issue). Balancing the evidence that supports Jarvis's sudden acceleration theory against the evidence that calls this theory into question, we do not find the evidence so favorable to Ford as to warrant judgment as a matter of law. To demonstrate this, we begin by analyzing the evidence that the district court collected in support of Ford's theory. 71 The Parking Brake. The district court stated that Jarvis's father testified that he set the parking brake. Jarvis, 69 F.Supp.2d at 602. This misconstrues the record. Jarvis's father, who had been the last one to use the van before the accident, testified that although it was his normal habit to put on the parking brake, particularly when it was on a slight incline, he had no memory of it as such in this case. When asked specifically whether he had set the brake before the accident, he answered, I'm not certain I put it in with the parking brake on. 72 The Brake Light. The district court indicated that Jarvis testified that she saw the word `brake' lighted on the dashboard, which according to Pope means that the parking brake is set. Id. at 603. This reading of the record fails to construe the facts in favor of Jarvis as required when ruling on a motion for judgment as a matter of law. Jarvis testified that she saw a white or light yellow light illuminated high on the left of the dashboard and stated, as I'm recalling[,] it said brake. Asked specifically if she had seen a red light illuminated on the panel from the beginning to the end of the incident, she answered no. Pope testified that the Aerostar had two instrument panel lights related to the braking system. The parking brake light, located on the right lower portion of the dash, was red and said brake. The rear anti-lock brake light, located on the upper left corner of the dash, was amber and would be illuminated for two seconds after the ignition is turned on and the van moves forward while the system reviews its components. Although Jarvis's statement that the light said brake is consistent with the parking brake being set, the placement of the light, its color, and the fact that it was not illuminated during the course of the entire incident all indicate that Jarvis saw the rear anti-lock brake light, not the parking brake light, illuminated. 73 The Speedometer. The district court noted that the fact that Jarvis saw the speedometer going up was inconsistent with DeClercq's testimony that a loose ground wire — required under Sero's theories — would have caused the speedometer to read zero during the sudden acceleration. Id. Jarvis did not present any evidence to rebut DeClercq's claim on this matter. 74 The Rear Brake Lights. The court also called attention to Joanne Valentine-Simonian's testimony that she saw no rear brake lights illuminated on plaintiff's vehicle when it passed her. Id. This statement fails to provide the context for Valentine-Simonian's statement, which affects its reliability. Valentine-Simonian testified that she ran toward the woods when she saw the Aerostar moving quickly down the road in her direction and then looked back to see the van pass, acknowledging that she had jumped out of the way. 75 The Absence of Skid Marks. A police officer investigating the accident testified that he saw no skid marks on the gravel driveway. This evidence, according to the district court, showed that Jarvis had not placed her foot forcefully on the brake. Id. As discussed above, however, the depletion of the brake vacuum reservoir by Jarvis's pumping the brakes would have resulted in diminished braking power regardless of the force with which Jarvis depressed the brake pedal. Pope suggested that the depletion of the vacuum reservoir by Jarvis's pumping the brakes could explain in an absence of skid marks. Moreover, Pope testified that under Ford's theory that the parking brake was on and Jarvis had pumped the accelerator instead of the brake, [i]t's possible that [the Aerostar] would have left skid marks. The Engine Racing. The court observed that, according to Pope's testimony, if the parking brake were on, pumping the accelerator would have resulted in the engine racing sound that plaintiff and Valentine-Simonian reported. Id. While true, the sound of the engine racing is equally consistent with the sudden acceleration explained by Sero's theory. 76 On the same topic, the court noted that Pope agreed that the cessation of the revving sound described by Valentine-Simonian could have indicated that plaintiff had taken her foot off the accelerator . . ., which would also explain the slowing of the vehicle. Id. Again, while true, the same evidence is equally consistent with Jarvis's testimony that she was pumping the brake. 77 Jarvis's Ability to Stop the Aerostar. The district court claimed that the testimony supported the conclusion that Jarvis would have been able to stop the Aerostar if she had pumped the brakes. Id. As discussed above, the pumping action itself could have depleted the vacuum reservoir, diminishing Jarvis's ability to stop the vehicle. 78 The Park Mechanism. The district court also noted Jarvis's testimony that she recalled the Aerostar being in park when it accelerated. Id. at 597 n. 31. All parties agree, however, that the Aerostar did accelerate. Therefore, either Jarvis was mistaken that the Aerostar was in park when it accelerated, or the park mechanism failed. Either way, the reason for the acceleration and Jarvis's inability to stop the Aerostar is unaffected. Furthermore, Ford's explanation for the accident would be similarly undermined by testimony that the Aerostar was in park when it accelerated, rendering this issue even less significant. 79 The NHTSA Report. Finally, the district court stated that [t]he reasonableness of Ford's position was supported, both generally and in certain specifics by the NHTSA report. Id. We agree, however, with the district court's earlier conclusion following the Daubert hearing that differing conclusions in the NHTSA report did not affect the admissibility of Sero's theories to prove the cause of Jarvis's accident. Jarvis, 1999 WL 461813, at . The weight given to conclusions in the NHTSA report, as compared to those of Sero, was a matter for the jury to decide. 80 The district court, meanwhile, failed to discuss the evidence in the record that weighs heavily against Ford's theory of driver error. Ford's theory that Jarvis had the parking brake on and applied her foot to the accelerator instead of the brake is irreconcilable with Jarvis's testimony that she began with her foot lightly on the brake and that the Aerostar's acceleration was sudden. If her foot was placed lightly on the accelerator instead of the brake, and the parking brake were on, the Aerostar would have accelerated slowly, if at all. Jarvis on the other hand, testified that the Aerostar took off. Another weakness of Ford's theory is that it assumes driver error not only as to which pedal Jarvis depressed but also as to the effect of each stroke of the pedal. Under Ford's theory, Jarvis would have felt the Aerostar accelerate with each application of the pedal, and slow each time she lifted her foot from the pedal. Ford's theory asks us to believe that Jarvis repeatedly applied force to the pedal without understanding the effect of her actions. Finally, Ford's theory is unable to account for Jarvis's claim that she depressed the pedal with both feet. As part of the accident reconstruction, Jarvis was asked to sit in the Aerostar and to place both feet on the accelerator. She was able to do so only by placing one foot on top of the other. When asked to do the same with the brake pedal, she found that it accommodated both feet. The jury viewed photos taken for purposes of this litigation showing Jarvis sitting in the Aerostar at the accident site. The photos also demonstrated that, when asked to put both feet on the accelerator, Jarvis had one foot placed over the other. 81 In sum, we find the ultimate issue of Ford's negligence to be a jury question. Ford did not present evidence that conclusively demonstrated, as a matter of law, that Jarvis's accident did not occur because of a defect in the Aerostar's cruise control mechanism. Jarvis's testimony, the testimony of other Aerostar owners who had similar experiences, and evidence of hundreds of other reported cases of sudden acceleration in Aerostars, combined with an expert's scientific explanation of how the cruise control may have malfunctioned and of an inexpensive remedy, were all found admissible by the district court. Together, this evidence provided the jury with a sufficient evidentiary basis to reasonably conclude that the cruise control mechanism had been defectively designed.