Keating v. United Instruments, Inc.

742 A.2d 128, 144 N.H. 393, 1999 N.H. LEXIS 128
CourtSupreme Court of New Hampshire
DecidedDecember 8, 1999
DocketNos. 97-161; 97-373
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 742 A.2d 128 (Keating v. United Instruments, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of New Hampshire primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Keating v. United Instruments, Inc., 742 A.2d 128, 144 N.H. 393, 1999 N.H. LEXIS 128 (N.H. 1999).

Opinion

THAYER, J.

These appeals arise out of a wrongful death action brought by the estates of Michael J. Keating and Karen Maloney following an airplane crash in Brookline. The jury returned a verdict for the defendants, United Instruments (United), Mooney Aircraft (Mooney), and Tokyo Aircraft Instruments (Tokyo). The estate of Maloney did not appeal. The remaining plaintiff, the estate of Keating, appeals a Superior Court (Dalianis, J.) ruling excluding evidence pursuant to New Hampshire Rule of Evidence 407. United appeals the trial court’s decision granting Mooney relief under its cross-claim against United and Tokyo (referred to collectively as United/Tokyo) for attorney’s fees. We affirm.

The parties agree that in 1991, Keating, a flight instructor, and his student, Maloney, set out in an aircraft manufactured by-Mooney on an instructional flight. The aircraft utilized a model 5934 altimeter manufactured by United/Tokyo. At the time of the crash, the pilots were practicing stalls and stall recoveries. Due to the force of the impact, much of the aircraft and its component parts, including the altimeter, were destroyed or lost.

I. Subsequent Remedial Measures

The plaintiff argues that the trial court abused its discretion in excluding evidence of a subsequent remedial measure to impeach the testimony of James Peterson, an FAA investigator, while allowing Peterson to testify to tests of the 5934 altimeter that were conducted after the subsequent remedial measure occurred.

[395]*395Peterson described the physical characteristics of an altimeter in his testimony.

An altimeter is a little bit like a mechanical clock. There are shafts, wheels; there are parts that have long shafts, if you will, you can think of it as an axle. There’s a wheel attached to it. The axle is held in place by two end plates, one on either end of the axle. The dimensions between the two end plates defines a — an end-play. If the end-play is insufficient, . . . there’s friction added to this very delicate mechanism, and there may be lag or hysteresis in the operation of the instrument.

Prior to 1992, United/Tokyo set the end-play by sight and feel. After 1992, the end-play was set by a measuring device called a jig. The model 5934 altimeter in the plane at the time of the crash was manufactured in 1988, well before the introduction of the jig into the manufacturing process. Pursuant to New Hampshire Rule of Evidence 407, the trial court excluded evidence of the jig as a subsequent remedial measure.

Peterson testified about a series of tests performed on model 5934 in response to concerns raised, beginning in 1989, by an altimeter repair person, William Magagnos. Some of the testimony concerned specific tests that Peterson or others conducted beginning in 1993. Some of Peterson’s testimony concerned tests done after 1993, but on altimeters that were modified by someone other than United/Tokyo or were manufactured before the introduction of the jig. Finally, some of Peterson’s testimony involved summaries of FAA investigations begun in 1989 and concluding sometime after 1993. The results of all of these tests reflected that the altimeter met the requirements of the technical standard order (TSO), which assures that the altimeter’s design meets the minimum requirements of the Federal Aviation Regulations, and that the concerns raised by Magagnos were unjustified.

According to the plaintiff, Peterson’s testimony misled the jury because evidence of the jig was excluded, but the tests that were conducted by the FAA concerned altimeters whose end-plays were set by the jig. Under New Hampshire Rule of Evidence 407, evidence of subsequent remedial measures is inadmissible “to prove negligence or culpable conduct in connection with the event.” Such evidence is admissible, however, “when offered for another purpose, such as proving ownership, control, or feasibility of precautionary measures, if controverted, or impeachment.” N.H. R. Ev. 407. We have never directly ruled on the proper use of subsequent remedial [396]*396measures for impeachment purposes. In Cyr v. J.I. Case Co., 139 N.H. 193, 652 A.2d 685 (1994), however, we observed that courts must be careful not to allow this exception to swallow the general rule against introduction of subsequent remedial measures, see Cyr, 139 N.H. at 207, 652 A.2d at 694, “since any evidence of subsequent remedial measures might be thought to contradict and so in a sense impeach [a party’s] testimony,” Kelly v. Crown Equipment Co., 970 F.2d 1273, 1278 (3d Cir. 1992). Other courts have allowed subsequent remedial measures to impeach a defendant who has testified that the product in question is designed to be the safest or the best. See, e.g., Kelly, 970 F.2d at 1278; Muzyka v. Remington Arms Co., Inc., 774 F.2d 1309, 1313-14 (5th Cir. 1985). In those cases, subsequent remedial measures were used to impeach the allegation that the product at the time of the incident was the safest or the best that it could be. See Muzyka, 774 F.2d at 1313-14.

Such is not the case here. Peterson did not testify that the best or safest way to set the end-play was by feel and sight. Rather, he testified that a series of FAA investigations from 1989 until 1993 had not changed the FAA’s conclusion that the altimeter passed the TSO test. Evidence of the 1992 introduction of the jig into the manufacturing process would not have shown that the introduction of the jig changed the opinion of the FAA about the safety of the altimeter. Moreover, the plaintiff introduced evidence from his own witnesses that the end-play of certain altimeters was not always set correctly. Cf. Gardner v. Chevron U.S.A., Inc., 675 F.2d 658, 660 (5th Cir. 1982) (because jury heard, evidence similar to the evidence trial court declined to admit, any error was harmless). Additionally, Peterson’s own testimony did not contradict the plaintiff’s claim that the setting of the end-play could be done incorrectly. In fact, he testified that “[o]ne of the most common causes of an overhauled altimeter not operating correctly is end-play has not been properly set. It’s a difficult, tedious, craftsmanship-like job.” Because the evidence offered by the plaintiff would not have directly impeached any of Peterson’s testimony, we conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding it.

The plaintiff also appeals the trial court’s exclusion of the report of another FAA investigator, Mr. Lundquist, which concluded that the model 5934 altimeter was not safe. The plaintiff contends that this exclusion left the jury with the erroneous impression, from Peterson’s testimony, that the FAA uniformly found the altimeter to be safe. The trial court initially ruled that the report was inadmissible under the public records exception to the hearsay rule, N.H. R. [397]*397EV. 803(8), because the FAA had never adopted the report. The court deferred deciding whether it was admissible under the catch-all hearsay exception of New Hampshire Rule of Evidence 803(24) until a voir dire of Lundquist occurred.

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742 A.2d 128, 144 N.H. 393, 1999 N.H. LEXIS 128, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/keating-v-united-instruments-inc-nh-1999.