Melissa Murphy-Petros (Of Counsel-Chicago, IL) and Michael Zidek (Of Counsel-Chicago, IL) obtained affirmance from the Illinois Appellate Court, First District, on behalf of Wilson Elser’s client, a Chicago car dealership. The case arose from a fatal car accident involving a 19-year-old driver and his 18-year-old girlfriend, who was killed while riding as a front-seat passenger. The plaintiff driver claimed he lost control when the car’s tilt steering wheel suddenly dropped into his lap. Eyewitnesses reported that he was speeding and swerving between lanes, and the police accident reconstructionist corroborated that. The plaintiff and his girlfriend’s estate sued the car manufacturer alleging a design defect, and our client, the dealership from which the girlfriend and her mother purchased the car, alleging that they had reported steering wheel problems to our client in the weeks before the accident, but the dealership failed to inspect or repair the car.

The estate settled during motions in limine. After a two-week trial, the jury awarded the plaintiff $150,000 and allocated 90 percent of the fault to him, 10 percent to the dealership, and none to the manufacturer. Under section 2-1116 of the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure, a plaintiff cannot recover if his share of fault exceeds 50 percent. As such, the court entered judgment for both defendants. In the post-trial motion and on appeal, the plaintiff sought a new trial, arguing that the jury had recorded its verdict on the wrong form. This was a serious issue, especially given the growing body of Illinois case law supporting new trials based on verdict-form errors alone, including decisions issued as recently as last year, where verdicts were deemed legally inconsistent.

After Wilson Elser was retained as appellate counsel to monitor the trial and handle the post-trial and appellate proceedings, Melissa and Michael successfully defended the judgment. Deciding the appeal without oral argument, the appellate court held that the verdict was not legally inconsistent because the jury’s intent to assign 90 percent of the fault to the plaintiff was clear: it wrote “90%” on the fault-allocation form and correctly reduced the $150,000 award by that percentage.