Raymond Perez (Partner-White Plains, NY) collaborated with Michigan colleagues Kevin Mulvaney (Partner-Detroit, MI) and Kurt J. Parker, Jr. (Of Counsel-Detroit, MI) to secure a disposition for their client, a national pontoon boat manufacturer. The plaintiff had demanded tens of millions of dollars and attempted to avoid the caps on noneconomic damages. The case arose from a July 2023 incident involving a rented 2006 pontoon boat. The plaintiff alleged that her hand was caught in a pinch point in the boat railing, resulting in a partial finger amputation, and asserted claims for negligence, strict liability based on alleged design and manufacturing defects, gross negligence, failure to warn, breach of express warranty, and violation of the Michigan Consumer Protection Act. The matter required the team to untangle a complex corporate and transactional history involving multiple entities, asset transfers, predecessor entities, and competing theories of successor status. The subject boat was manufactured several years before the client acquired certain assets in a later transaction, and the plaintiff sought to impose liability through successor liability and related product liability theories.
 
In granting summary disposition on successor liability, the court rejected the plaintiff’s effort to hold the client liable for a boat it did not manufacture and found that the record did not support proceeding against the client on that theory. The court also granted summary disposition on negligence and gross negligence under both legal sufficiency and factual sufficiency grounds, granted summary disposition on failure to warn based on the absence of the necessary relationship between the client and the pontoon boat, and dismissed the consumer protection claim for failure to state a claim. In a separate dispositive motion, the team also secured an order precluding the plaintiff’s vocational rehabilitation expert from testifying regarding economic damages after challenging the factual foundation and discovery record underlying the expert’s opinions. Since the case was filed, the team developed and executed a defense strategy that included multiple depositions, extensive discovery, and targeted expert and damages challenges. That coordinated approach allowed the team to frame the key legal and evidentiary issues for the court and ultimately positioned the matter for rulings that eliminated the claims against the client.