TLPJ Wins Public Access to Scathing Court Decision
Revealing Destruction of Evidence in Auto Safety Case

Public’s First Amendment Rights Vindicated; Crash Victims No Longer Barred from Challenging Credibility of Expert Witness

17-year-old Sarah Davis was a passenger in this Honda Civic, which crashed in March 1999, leaving her paralyzed. Photo by Gary W. Harsh Photographic Services

Victims of auto crashes are no longer forbidden from seeing, discussing, and questioning auto industry expert witness Robert Gratzinger about a scathing court decision finding that Gratzinger and the American Honda Motor Company (Honda) “deliberately” destroyed evidence in a high-stakes auto safety case. The blistering 36-page decision, which sanctioned Honda for trying to “win by cheating,” was unsealed in a legal challenge by the national public interest law firm Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (TLPJ). The decision finds Honda and Gratzinger “wrongfully and intentionally altered the most significant physical evidence in the case.”

“The public has the right to know about the unethical conduct exposed in this decision,” said TLPJ Staff Attorney Rebecca E. Epstein, who argued the case. “People left in wheelchairs by crashes will no longer have to sit in silence while Mr. Gratzinger testifies for Honda, Ford, Toyota, and Mazda. We applaud Judge Garbolino’s decision to end this untenable and unjust situation.”

The sanctions decision, issued on October 3, 2002, by Placer County (California) Superior Court Judge James D. Garbolino, found that Gratzinger had “deliberately” obliterated key evidence in Davis v. Honda, a lawsuit based on a March 1999 accident in a Honda Civic that left plaintiff Sarah Davis, then 17 years old, a quadriplegic. The court found that by intentionally destroying marks showing that Davis had been wearing a seat belt at the time of the accident – the “single most critical issue” in the case – Honda had “attempted to rob” the plaintiff “of her right to litigate on a level playing field.” As a sanction, the court held Honda liable for Davis’s injuries and ruled the jury would only decide how much in damages Honda paid Davis.

One week later, the parties settled the case and, to facilitate the settlement, the court entered an order sealing and vacating the sanctions decision. The extraordinary sealing order banned all publication and sharing of the decision, and prohibited anyone from even mentioning the sanctions decision in any legal proceeding. As a result, automotive engineer Gratzinger has been shielded from questions about his actions in Davis and has continued to serve as an expert witness for automakers in crash cases around the country.

TLPJ’s motion challenging the sealing order was granted on October 26, 2005, but the order granting it was mailed and just received. The unsealing order vindicates the public’s First Amendment rights and opens the way for crash victims’ attorneys nationwide to question Gratzinger’s credibility. The scathing sanctions decision in Davis, the sealing order, TLPJ’s motion challenging the sealing order, and the 7-page order amending the sealing order and making the sanctions decision public can all be viewed on TLPJ’s web site at www.tlpj.org.

TLPJ challenged the secrecy order on behalf of the Center for Auto Safety, a national consumer group that works to improve automobile safety, and attorneys representing car crash victims in Tennessee and Mississippi. Attorney Patrick M. Ardis of Wolff Ardis, P.C., in Memphis, Tennessee, represents Bettye Maxwell in Maxwell v. Ford Motor Company, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Maxwell’s husband, who was killed in an August 2001 crash in a Ford F150 pickup truck in DeSoto County, Mississippi. Gratzinger was called as an expert witness in the Maxwell case, but, because of the secrecy order, the presiding judge prevented Maxwell’s lawyers, including Ardis, from questioning Gratzinger about his conduct in the Davis case. Attorney Lee T. Griffin of Pajcic & Pajcic in Jacksonville, Florida, represents Todd Irish in Irish v. Ford Motor Company, a lawsuit filed after Irish was rendered a paraplegic as a result of a November 2002 accident involving his Ford pickup truck. Gratzinger has been named an expert witness in the Irish case as well.

“Because of this unsealing decision, the truth can now be known and told,” said Griffin. “If the defendants in our case continue to use Mr. Gratzinger as an expert witness, the jury will now get to hear that this man was found by a court to have intentionally destroyed key evidence in a similar case.”

TLPJ Cooperating Counsel Dina Micheletti of Fazio I Micheletti in Pleasanton, California, said, “We’re delighted that Judge Garbolino has affirmed the importance of protecting the public’s First Amendment right of access to court records. His compassion for Sarah Davis and his outrage at the behavior of Honda’s expert witness and Honda itself are very evident in the unsealed sanctions decision.”

TLPJ’s legal team also includes Jeffrey Fazio of Fazio I Micheletti, TLPJ Executive Director Arthur H. Bryant, and TLPJ Brayton-Baron Fellow Leslie A. Bailey. The challenge is part of TLPJ’s Project ACCESS, a 15-year-old project against excessive court secrecy, and the group’s new Access to Justice Campaign, a nationwide initiative to keep America’s courthouse doors open to all.

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Trial Lawyers for Public Justice is the only national public interest law firm dedicated to using trial lawyers’ skills and resources to advance the public good. Founded in 1982, TLPJ utilizes a nationwide network of more than 3,000 outstanding trial lawyers to pursue precedent-setting and socially significant litigation. It has a wide-ranging litigation docket in the areas of consumer rights, worker safety, civil rights and liberties, toxic torts, environmental protection, and access to the courts. TLPJ is the principal project of The TLPJ Foundation, a not-for-profit membership organization. It has offices in Washington, DC, and Oakland, CA. TLPJ’s State Coordinators for California are Ingrid Evans in San Francisco, tel. 415-677-1234; and Sharon Arkin in Newport Beach, tel. 949-720-1288. The TLPJ web site address is www.tlpj.org.