A case out of the Beaumont Court of Appeals involving discovery sanctions, evidentiary rulings, and the jury charge has attracted the attention of the Texas Supreme Court.
Schindler Elevator Corporation v. Darren Ceasar (No. 09-19-00419-CV; No. 22-0030) arose from injuries allegedly suffered by plaintiff when a hotel elevator malfunctioned, requiring the fire department to open the elevator doors to get him out. Plaintiff alleged that the elevator sped up, overshot the right floor, and abruptly stopped, jarring his neck and back. He also claimed that he became anxious when trapped in the elevator, had subsequent nightmares, and was suffering from PTSD. He sued the hotel and Schindler, the elevator maintenance company. The court granted summary judgment for the hotel. A jury awarded plaintiff more than $800,000 in economic and noneconomic damages, as well as $25,000 in discovery sanctions against Schindler for failing to respond to plaintiff’s discovery requests for elevator maintenance manuals and instructions. Schindler appealed on several issues relating to the jury charge (the trial court submitted a res ipsa loquitor charge, which Schindler contested), evidentiary rulings, the discovery sanctions, and the denial of its motion for new trial. The Beaumont Court of Appeals affirmed.
In its petition for review, Schindler targets four issues: (1) the discovery sanctions; (2) the res ipsa jury charge; (3) the exclusion of plaintiff’s admission that he sought SSD benefits for neck and back injuries four years prior to the elevator incident; and (4) the trial court’s refusal to give the jury a spoliation of evidence charge relating to plaintiff’s deletion of a Facebook video he filmed in the stuck elevator. In a very lengthy opinion, most of which details the evidence presented at trial, the court of appeals determined that it could not find that the trial court abused its discretion as to any of these issues or that they would have made any difference in the jury’s deliberations.
The petition, however, takes the court of appeals to task for affirming discovery sanctions for non-production of evidence when plaintiff never filed a motion to compel production in the first place. It argues further that Schindler, against whom the sanctions were imposed, did not know anything about it and never withheld anything plaintiff asked for (in other words, you might say the petition throws defense counsel under the bus). The evidentiary issues, however, are most interesting to us. According to the parts of the record reproduced in the court of appeals’ opinion, before filing this suit plaintiff had made at least four attempts to get something for his neck and back pain, to wit three lawsuits and applying for SSD (the application was denied). He also made the interesting decision (after talking to a lawyer) to seek treatment at a hospital in Port Arthur rather than at the Beaumont hospital near the hotel where the incident occurred. More interesting still is the trial court’s allusion to the presence of a medical funder in the case. These two aspects certainly raise some questions and, when coupled with the exclusion of plaintiff’s unsuccessful attempt to get disability benefits for the very same injuries, seem to suggest that something is a little off. As to the res ipsa instruction, the court of appeals determined that even if trial court erred in submitting the question, it did not prejudice Schindler because there was other evidence (aside from the fact of the elevator’s malfunction) from which the jury could conclude that Schindler was negligent. Still, a res ipsa instruction is not something you see every day, and it certainly doesn’t seem appropriate for what appears to be a fairly routine elevator snafu. Just because an elevator malfunctions does not necessarily mean that somebody was negligent, yet the trial court submitted the question anyway.
We confess that upon reading the court of appeals’ opinion, we didn’t see anything about it that appeared wildly off the mark. But SCOTX sees something here that either needs clarification or fixing. Oral arguments are scheduled for February 1.
