Burnham Brown partner Paul Caleo with associate Dave Wilgus defended a national manufacturer of valves and its distributor from claims of design defect in a three week trial in Placer County that resulted in the jury returning a defense verdict on March 13, 2009 after two days of deliberation. The lawsuit arose out of an accident that occurred on December 7, 1998 when the Northside snowmaking system at the Homewood Ski Resort at Lake Tahoe exploded causing a two foot metal pipe to fly off it and strike its Mountain Manager in the forehead resulting in severe facial fractures and a traumatic brain injury. The Homewood Ski Resort, by and through its Mountain Manager the Plaintiff, had recently purchased two-inch ball valves and installed some of them on its snowmaking system, but had allowed water to remain in the cavities of the valves by failing to properly drain the system after use. The water in turn froze and expanded causing the valves to fail prior to the date of the snowmaking system exploding. On the day of the accident, Plaintiff and another Homewood employee failed to properly bleed the air out of the snowmaking system when testing it for a leak, and caused it to explode when there was a sudden release of the energy from the compressed air in the system.
This was the re-trial of a single cause of action for Product Liability Design Defect Consumer Expectation test from a case that was tried over a three month period in 2004 involving multiple causes of action for strict products liability and negligence against the same defendants. In the initial trial of this case it appeared that the jury had returned a defense verdict on all claims as to both defendants, however, due to an ambiguous answer to one of the over 29 questions the jury had to answer on the special verdict form, the court of Appeal determined that the single claim of Design Defect Consumer Expectation Test needed to be re-tried. In the re-trial, a new jury once again concluded that the cause of the accident was the negligence of Homewood Ski Resort in its design and operation of its snowmaking system.
In the re-trial, Burnham Brown's trial lawyer, Paul Caleo, had to contend with the fact that Plaintiff was able to refine his liability arguments based on the feedback he had gotten from the jurors in the first trial, and was also able to present a far more compelling damages case. In addition to the initial critical injuries involving severe facial fractures where it looked like, to one witness, that Plaintiff's "nose had been pushed behind his eyes," Plaintiff's long term and permanent injuries included complete loss of smell, partial loss of taste, almost constant headaches, poor peripheral vision and some double vision, as well as a new and more recent diagnosis of Frontal Lobe Syndrome that is caused by trauma to the front part of the brain and resulted in permanent changes to Plaintiff's personality and executive functioning. The jury heard eloquent and moving testimony from both the Plaintiff and his wife on the effects of the personality changes caused by Frontal Lobe Syndrome.
Notwithstanding the powerful and sympathetic damages case, Mr. Caleo was able to persuade the jury through his voir dire questioning and in his closing argument to consider the facts and evidence relating to the liability issues separately from the injuries and to agree not to consider how to adequately compensate Plaintiff until they had actually found the Defendants liable for Plaintiff's injuries. The jury agreed with Mr. Caleo that the only entity legally responsible for Plaintiff's injuries and damages was his employer, Homewood Ski Resort. Several jurors told Burnham Brown's trial team that if they had found liability, they would have awarded damages to Plaintiff that were in excess of what plaintiff's counsel asked them to award.
Paul Caleo is a partner and one of Burnham Brown's premier trial lawyers. He has extensive experience in complex tort and catastrophic injury cases involving premises liability, product liability, retail theft and battery cases, commercial trucking and construction site accidents. Mr. Caleo has extensive trial experience that includes trying 13 jury trials and two binding arbitrations in the past eight years. Dave Wilgus is an associate with Burnham Brown whose practice focuses on defending clients in tort matters involving premises liability and product liability cases. In Addition, Mr. Wilgus represents and counsels transportations entities and advises major insurance carriers on construction defect coverage issues. Mr. Caleo can be reached at 510.835.6809 or pcaleo@burnhambrown.com and Mr. Wilgus can be reached at 510.835.6829 or dwilgus@burnhambrown.com.