A June 3 hearing has been scheduled to decide whether a Fort Worth judge should be made to step aside in a former flight attendant’s sexual-assault lawsuit against American Airlines.
The former flight attendant, Kimberly Goesling, moved last week to have Tarrant County District Judge Kimberly Fitzpatrick recused, claiming the judge gave jurors an “improper, harmful instruction” before they exonerated American on May 11 of responsibility for a British celebrity chef’s 2018 sexual assault of Goesling.
Because Fitzpatrick refused to recuse herself, the matter was, under Texas civil procedure rules, referred to Judge David Evans, presiding judge of the state judicial region that includes Tarrant County.
Evans on Thursday assigned the matter to Senior Judge David Peeples of San Antonio for resolution, a seasoned jurist known in legal circles for his ability to calmly and evenhandedly preside over complex and delicate cases.
Peeples, a former state Court of Appeals justice, state district judge and chairman of the Texas Multi-District Litigation Panel, is of counsel to the San Antonio firm Pritchard Young and is frequently called upon to serve as an arbitrator. In a 2018 Texas Lawyer article, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht was quoted as calling Peeples the “gold standard” for handling touchy cases.
The jury instruction that precipitated Goesling’s recusal motion dealt with the alleged role of an American Airlines manager, Brett Hooyerink, in abetting chef Mark Sargeant’s sexual assault of Goesling in a hotel room during a business trip to Germany in January 2018. Sargeant, who was working with American at the time to develop in-flight menus, testified that Hooyerink plied him with drinks on the night of the attack and told him Goesling was romantically interested in him.
Goesling sued American in 2020, seeking $26 million in damages.
On May 11, after a two-week trial, a jury in Fitzpatrick’s court found that Sargeant had assaulted Goesling but exonerated American of responsibility for the chef’s actions.
According to court records, during a May 9 conference on the jury charge, one of Goesling’s lawyers objected to the inclusion of the following language, which the judge agreed to delete:
“You are instructed that, even if Brett Hooyerink supplied Mark Sargeant with the means of committing a sexual assault, Brett Hooyerink is not liable if he has no reason to suppose that a sexual assault will be committed.”
That language was not in the charge as it was read to the jury in open court. But it was “somehow” in the written version that was provided to jurors when they deliberated.
On May 18 – a week after the jury returned its verdict in favor of American and was dismissed – the judge hand-filed a version of the charge that, unlike the one the jurors signed on May 11, does not include the disputed language.
Goesling’s lead attorney in the case is J. Robert Miller Jr. of Miller Bryant in Dallas.
The lead attorney for American Airlines, Shauna J. Wright, a partner in the Fort Worth firm Kelly Hart & Hallman, has previously declined to comment on the motion for recusal.