Hickerson v. Yamaha Motor Corporation USA

Filing 100

ORDER AND OPINION granting 63 Motion in Limine. Signed by Honorable J Michelle Childs on 7/19/2016.(abuc)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF SOUTH CAROLINA
ANDERSON DIVISION
Deborah Meek Hickerson,
Plaintiff,
v.
Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A., and
Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.,
Defendants.

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Civil Action No. 8:13-cv-02311-JMC

ORDER AND OPINION

This matter is before the court under the Motion in Limine of Defendants Yamaha Motor
Corporation, U.S.A., and Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., (collectively “Defendants”). (ECF No. 63).
Defendants seek to preclude Plaintiff Deborah Meek Hickerson (“Plaintiff”) from introducing
evidence “relating to products, warnings and/or technology” Defendants developed after they
manufactured the 2011 Yamaha WaveRunner VXS (“2011 Yamaha WaveRunner”) that might
imply that Defendants “should have warned, recalled, reported or taken other remedial action”
relating to the 2011 Yamaha WaveRunner. (Id. at 2.) Defendants maintain that this court should
exclude such evidence because they have no post-sale duty to warn, retrofit, or recall under South
Carolina product liability law and that evidence suggesting such is thus irrelevant under Fed. R.
Evid. 401 and unduly prejudicial under Fed. R. Evid. 403. (ECF No. 63 at 4.)
At a hearing on this matter, 1 Plaintiff averred that it had no intention of introducing
evidence to support a claim that Defendants had a post-sale duty to warn, retrofit, or recall.
However, in both Plaintiff’s Brief in Opposition to Defendants’ Motion and at the hearing, Plaintiff

1

A hearing on this matter was held in Greenville, South Carolina on July 18, 2016. (See ECF
No. 72.)
1

argues for the admissibility of evidence specifically concerning a 2011 Yamaha WaveRunner jet
steering nozzle-related recall in May 2012. (ECF No. 80 at 3.) Thus, this court limits its ruling to
the admissibility of the May 2012 Yamaha WaveRunner steering nozzle recall evidence.
Plaintiff argues that, because the May 2012 recall occurred a month before the accident,
evidence of it should not be excluded because it is not a subsequent remedial measure under Fed.
R. Evid. 407. (Id. at 3.) At the hearing, Plaintiff also responded to questions of the recall evidence’s
relevance and prejudicial value by arguing that the purpose of the evidence would be to highlight
Defendants’ intention to offer “pocket rocket” value as part of the 2011 Yamaha WaveRunner
design.
The May 2012 recall involved the jet steering nozzle on the 2011 Yamaha WaveRunner
VXS. Nowhere in Plaintiff’s Amended Complaint does she point to the steering nozzle on the
WaveRunner as being the source of her injuries or even connected to her injuries. (ECF No. 19.)
Rather, Plaintiff alleges that defects in the design of the “standard seat” on the 2011 WaveRunner
caused her injuries. (Id. at 3-7.)
Regarding relevance, to the extent that Plaintiff intends to introduce the recall evidence as
evidence of a similar incident—here, another design defect of the same product—the court finds
that the evidence should be excluded. Because evidence of similar incidents can be highly
prejudicial, “the proponent of other similar incident evidence must establish as a threshold matter
that such events occurred under substantially similar circumstances as the plaintiff’s incident.”
Jones v. Ford Motor Co., 204 Fed. App’x 280 (4th Cir. 2006) (unpublished opinion). It is not
evident that a potential steering mechanism design defect is substantially similar to an alleged
defect in the design of the seat to be relevant. Moreover, Plaintiff has not shown that evidence of

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the May 2012 recall tends to make any fact “of consequence” in determining this action “more or
less probable than it would be without the evidence.” 2 Fed. R. Evid. 401.
Finally, the prejudicial effect of the evidence greatly outweighs its limited or nonexistent
probative value because, if it were to be admitted, the jury could become confused and mistakenly
associate the existence of a defect in the design of the steering mechanism with the existence of a
defect in the design of the “standard seat,” which is the specific product design defect this case
concerns. Thus, evidence of the recall should be excluded under Fed. R. Evid. 403.
The court therefore GRANTS Defendants’ Motion in Limine (ECF No. 63) to preclude
Plaintiff from introducing at trial evidence relating to the May 2012 recall of the jet steering nozzle.
IT IS SO ORDERED.

United States District Judge
July 19, 2016
Columbia, South Carolina

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As Defendants pointed out at the hearing, if the purpose of the recall evidence is to highlight
Defendants’ intention to design the product with “pocket rocket” value, Defendants’ marketing
materials already reference that intention. (See ECF No. 80-3 at 2 (stating, as part of the 2011
Yamaha WaveRunner product planning sheet, that the product design concept was partly to offer
“pocket rocket” value).)
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