Ford Motor Co. v. Young

745 S.E.2d 299, 322 Ga. App. 348, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 1970, 2013 WL 3068231, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 522
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedJune 20, 2013
DocketA12A2335
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 745 S.E.2d 299 (Ford Motor Co. v. Young) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ford Motor Co. v. Young, 745 S.E.2d 299, 322 Ga. App. 348, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 1970, 2013 WL 3068231, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 522 (Ga. Ct. App. 2013).

Opinion

McFadden, Judge.

Attorneys Alan Thomas and Paul F. Malek appeal an order revoking their admission to practice as trial counsel pro hac vice in this product liability wrongful death case. They argue that their appeal is not moot, even though the underlying case has settled, and that they have standing to appeal, even though they were not parties below. They also argue that the trial court erred by considering the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct and by revoking their admissions. Finally, they argue that they were entitled to notice and a hearing before the court revoked their admissions. We agree with Thomas and Malek that the issue of the revocation of their admissions pro hac vice is not moot and that they have standing to appeal. We hold that the trial court properly considered the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct. But we agree with Thomas and Malek that they were entitled to notice and an opportunity to be heard before the trial court revoked their admissions. We therefore vacate the trial court’s order and remand the case for the court to allow the attorneys such due process. Consequently, we do not address the attorneys’ argument that the evidence was insufficient to support the revocations.

The parents of Donald R. Young III filed this product liability action against Ford Motor Company after their son was killed when the Ford Explorer in which he was a passenger ran off the road and rolled over. Thomas and Malek are Alabama attorneys, and the Cobb County State Court granted their applications for admission pro hac vice to represent Ford in the litigation.

In the course of discovery, plaintiffs’ counsel served Ford with a request for production of documents, asking for the production of any insurance policies that would be applicable in the case. According to [349]*349the trial court, Ford “failed to disclose the applicable insurance policies, did not object, and never supplemented its response to disclose any insurance policies.” Rather, it responded that Ford had sufficient resources to satisfy any judgment that reasonably could be expected to be awarded as damages.

The parties prepared a consolidated pretrial order. Section four of the pretrial order listed the individuals and entities with whom the parties would qualify the jury. The plaintiffs included in that listing “[a]ny insurer of Defendant Ford Motor Company,” but counsel for Ford struck through that phrase. Ford explained that it “objected] to any reference to an alleged insurer of Ford. Ford has sufficient resources to satisfy any judgment that reasonably could be expected to be awarded as damages in this action, if any.”

During pretrial hearings, as the parties and the trial court reviewed the pretrial order, Ford’s local counsel and Thomas obj ected to the plaintiffs’ request that the jury be qualified as to any insurer of Ford. Thomas specifically repeated the position that “Ford Motor Company essentially is self-insured to a point that it would satisfy any judgment in this case.” The court explained that the issue was not whether Ford had sufficient resources to pay a judgment, but the identity of Ford’s insurers so that the jury could be qualified as to anyone who had a financial interest at stake. When pressed further, Thomas said that he could not state that Ford would not make an insurance claim. He agreed to research the issue so that he could make a definitive statement on the record before the jury was qualified.

Voir dire was scheduled for the next week. According to the trial court, before voir dire began, Thomas again stated there was no insurance, but the statement was not made on the record. After an entire day of voir dire, the following colloquy occurred:

PLAINTIFFS’ COUNSEL: There’s one other issue if we’re moving on. This morning, when we talked about the insurance, you were going to make Mr. Thomas make a statement on the record about Ford’s insurance coverage.
THE COURT: Yes. You can go ahead. I don’t think that we got that on the record, did we, Madam Court Reporter?
PLAINTIFFS’ COUNSEL: No.
COURT REPORTER: No, ma’am.
THOMAS: No. The question had to do with insurance, Your Honor. I made inquiries over the weekend. My understanding is, just consistent with our discovery responses in here, that there is no insurance that would be applicable to satisfy a judgment in this case. And, as we said — I’ve got the exact [350]*350language in the discovery responses, but that it would be inappropriate to qualify as to whatever this insurance policy was — that I still haven’t seen yet.
THE COURT: And I’ll follow up with that. But the [c]ourt then, based on the representation of Mr. Thomas, as an officer of the court, and he is able to bind his client, then, if any issue as to insurance comes up in the future, it would be a fatal error, because it was a legal challenge for cause that they were not qualified as to that. Thank you.

The next day, before the parties began to strike the jury, plaintiffs’ counsel informed the court that Thomas had notified plaintiffs’ counsel that Ford did have applicable insurance. The court stated, ‘Mr. Thomas stood here and you represented, on the record on behalf of Ford, and I made it clear that if you then tried to use insurance or you wanted to invoke insurance that it would be a mistrial. I’ve dismissed jurors, I’ve let people go.” Local counsel for Ford explained, “We kind of dug into this a little bit further.” The court responded:

Well, we had pretrial hearings on June, I believe, 6th and 7th, and then again, maybe on the 8th. And, at that time, the court instructed Ford to provide that information on the day we were to begin striking the jury, and to be certain. And I told Mr. Thomas, at that time, along with the other attorneys, what the consequences would be and Mr. Thomas assured the court that he would find out that answer. And he represented yesterday morning that he had inquired and he had found out that information.

Thomas explained:

As I said yesterday, in our discovery responses, we’re clear that Ford has sufficient resources to satisfy any judgment that would reasonably be expected to be awarded as damages in this action. We had the discussion yesterday. I checked. That was still correct.... Through our discussions yesterday, Your Honor, I put my understanding of it on there, but during the discussions we made sure, Your Honor, and [local counsel] checked into it, and this is absolutely correct.
The only issue is whether there may be excess coverages that are very complicated and might kick in at some point and time, which we would not anticipate in this case. But, to [351]*351be perfectly honest about it, because we wanted to make sure that before this jury was empanelled we let the court know exactly, as best we could, what the issues were.

Local counsel clarified that Ford was self-insured up to $25 million but six policies of excess coverage could be at play. (It was later determined that significantly more policies could potentially cover the judgment.)

Thomas said that he had not intentionally misled the court. He explained that he learned by e-mail that morning of the insurance, and thát he then promptly advised plaintiffs’ counsel and the court.

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Bluebook (online)
745 S.E.2d 299, 322 Ga. App. 348, 2013 Fulton County D. Rep. 1970, 2013 WL 3068231, 2013 Ga. App. LEXIS 522, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ford-motor-co-v-young-gactapp-2013.