Opinion ID: 1743425
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Was a BIC lighter involved?

Text: BIC also argues that the evidence was insufficient to support a finding that a BIC lighter was involved. The only witnesses who testified at trial with certainty as to the presence of BIC lighters at the scene were Cunningham and Franklin Williams. Franklin Williams testified at trial that he generally bought BIC lighters, and at a later point in his testimony he stated that he bought only BIC lighters. Throughout the case and until three weeks before trial, some seven years after the accident, Franklin Williams's deposition testimony and Cunningham's deposition testimony were rather specific as to the color of the BIC lighter they said was present on the occasion of the fire. Franklin Williams testified by deposition that he had had only one lighter; that it was a black BIC lighter; and that he had left it on Cunningham's dresser on the morning of the fire. Cunningham testified by deposition that there was only one black BIC lighter in the house, saying it was the only lighter we had. Three weeks before the trial, in response to a request for admissions, Williams, as guardian, asserted that the lighter that caused the fire was a black or blue BIC lighter. The state fire marshal's report plainly stated that a yellow/orange ... refillable lighter had been recovered from the fire scene. While the lighter had been in the possession of the fire marshal at the time of the fire marshal's investigation, its whereabouts were unknown by the time the action was commenced two years later. At trial, the investigating officer for the Talladega Fire Department testified that he found a yellow lighter that was similar to a BIC lighter or a brand of another manufacturer, but he could not say it was a BIC lighter, merely stating that it was similar to a BIC lighter. When asked to identify a BIC lighter from a group of lighters, he selected a lighter manufactured by another company. Fire department officials testified that firefighters found either a red or a yellow lighter at the fire scene. Cunningham and Franklin Williams testified that they had brought numerous lighters of various colors to the apartment in the months before the fire. Formby, the next-door neighbor, testified that she saw lighters of various colors, including yellow, black, and red, at the fire scene, but she never identified the lighters as BIC lighters. Hence, according to Formby's testimony, there were lighters other than a single black lighter at the fire scene. BIC points out that the testimony of Mr. Williams and Cunningham is the only evidence that links its lighters to the scene; that that evidence is inherently unreliable, by reason of the fact that those witnesses changed their testimony from that given in their depositions; and, therefore, that the trial court should have directed a verdict in its favor. We cannot say that the change in the witnesses' testimony regarding the color of the lighter is so critical as to authorize a directed verdict based on an analogy to the trial court's authority to enter a summary judgment even though there exists an apparent genuine issue of material fact, if that issue is created by a witness's affidavit that contradicts, without explanation, that witness's deposition. See Couch v. Woody Anderson Ford, Inc., 558 So.2d 888 (Ala.1989). Formby's testimony that at the fire scene she saw lighters of various colors, when coupled with Franklin Williams's testimony that he bought lighters of several colors in the months preceding the fire and that he bought only BIC lighters, constitutes evidence upon which the jury could have concluded that a BIC lighter was involved; the jury could have concluded this independently of the contradicted portion of the depositions of Franklin Williams and Cunningham dealing with the color of the lighter. The jury could have concluded that Dontavious started the fire with a BIC lighter other than the black BIC lighter on the dresser. The trial court properly rejected BIC's argument that it was entitled to a directed verdict on the ground that the plaintiff had failed to present substantial evidence indicating that a BIC lighter had been involved in the fire.