© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(April 4) – A federal jury in Austin on Thursday awarded $15.8 million to a Buda, Texas woman and her family for damages she suffered from a defective utility vehicle that left her paralyzed in 2011.
The eight-man jury unanimously ruled that Rhode Island-based Textron, Inc.’s E-Z-GO business defectively designed the kick-off brake feature of its workhorse utility vehicle and it was unreasonably dangerous to customers – including plaintiff Gini Nester, a 56-year-old wife and mother of two who is now a quadriplegic.
Court staff told lawyers representing the plaintiffs that Thursday’s verdict is the largest products liability ruling to ever be awarded against a Fortune 500 company in an Austin federal court.
Sean Breen, who led the trial for the Nesters, said the damages award will allow Ms. Nester to get the proper healthcare she needs and sends a strong message to Textron that it needs “to fix this danger before someone else gets hurt.”
He said the verdict was also a good day for the justice system as a whole.
“It means people can still have faith in the jury system and dispels the notion that only uneducated or ignorant people are the only jurors that award significant compensation for significant injuries,” said Breen, a partner at the Austin-area firm Howry, Breen & Herman. “This was an extremely intelligent, professional and conservative jury that saw the facts and followed the law.”
Brandon Haddock, a spokesman for Textron, said in a statement issued Monday that the company is “exploring options for further legal review.
“We are disappointed by the jury’s findings against E-Z-GO, which we do not believe were supported by the evidence presented at trial. It is important to note that, despite public reports that the entire verdict was assessed against E-Z-GO, the jury in fact determined that the company was only 50 percent responsible. Accordingly, the verdict against E-Z-GO is 50 percent of the reported award,” Haddock said in the statement.
Nester’s accident occurred on Dec. 5, 2011, when she was using an E-Z-GO utility vehicle – essentially a golf cart with a dump bed on the back – to assist with feeding and moving the small group of livestock on her family ranch.
When Nester approached the gate that led to the pasture, she got out to open it after applying the parking brake on the vehicle. While her back was turned to the vehicle, a bag of cattle cubes fell on the accelerator pedal, which kicked off the parking brake and caused the vehicle to take off on its own. The 1,050-pound vehicle ran over Nester before she had time to dodge it, leaving her paralyzed and helpless for more than an hour before her husband discovered her, court documents say.
Because of the accident, Nester now requires around-the-clock care from her husband and daughters, who were ages 12 and 14 at the time of the accident, Breen said.
“These daughters are truly heroines. At ages 12 and 14, their relationship with their mother turned upside down, where they became the mother and the mother became a child,” Breen said.
E-Z-GO is a division of Textron, a Fortune 500 conglomerate with $13.4 billion in revenues that is known for powerful brands such as the aircraft giant, Bell Helicopter. Founded in 1954 as a golf cart maker, E-Z-GO joined the Textron family in 1960 and expanded its product line to include utility vehicles for work and recreation and material-handling machines, court documents say.
Breen argued at trial that E-Z-GO’s “outdated” kickoff brake system in its utility vehicles has never been updated since becoming a division of Textron, despite the opportunity to incorporate advances in safety technology in the newer models the company has developed. He also argued that Textron knew about the potential runaway danger before 1998 (the year E-Z-GO began selling the particular utility vehicle model that the Nesters owned) but did nothing to solve the danger.
He said a strong piece of evidence he was able to show jurors was a YouTube video of a similar E-Z-GO accident in which a vehicle struck a group of people standing on the football field of the Dallas Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium during a high school football championship. The accident happened within two weeks of Nester’s.
Breen said the biggest challenge of the case was the talent of his opposing counsel.
“This case was ferociously defended by a group of extremely accomplished lawyers,” he said.
Though the jury still found Nester 50 percent liable for the accident, it awarded her $15.8 million in damages for physical pain, mental anguish, disfigurement, medical expenses and other damages.
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