Justia New Mexico Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

Articles Posted in Personal Injury
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After Plaintiff’s home sustained water damage in a hailstorm, he asked his insurer Allstate to cover the loss; consequently, Steamatic was hired to perform water abatement and mold remediation services. Plaintiff claimed that the mold was not remediated properly and that he developed a severe and permanent lung condition as a result. New Mexico does not permit a civil plaintiff to recover duplicate compensatory damages for the same injuries. The collateral source rule presents an exception to the prohibition of double recovery, permitting a plaintiff to recover the same damages from both a defendant and a collateral source. The New Mexico Supreme Court has held that the payor of the prejudgment settlement of a claim qualifies as a collateral source and that the payment does not reduce the same damages the plaintiff may recover from an adjudicated wrongdoer. The issue this case presented for review centered on whether a payment in postjudgment settlement of a claim by an adjudicated wrongdoer qualified as a collateral source. The Court clarified that the collateral source rule had no application to a postjudgment payment made by an adjudicated wrongdoer. Here, the Court held that the payment, which Plaintiff received in a postjudgment settlement with Allstate satisfied a portion of Plaintiff’s damages and extinguished Plaintiff’s right to recover the same damages from Steamatic. The Court explained that the share of damages fully satisfied by Allstate must offset the damages Plaintiff may recover from Steamatic. View "Gonzagowski v. Steamatic of Albuquerque" on Justia Law

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A jury awarded four Plaintiffs a total of more than $165 million in damages to compensate them for a tragic accident that claimed half of a young family in a single instant, and left surviving family members physically and emotionally injured. Defendants appealed the verdict as excessive, contending it was not supported by substantial evidence and was tainted by passion or prejudice. The Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict. The New Mexico Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider whether the Court of Appeals erred by: (1) applying an abuse of discretion standard to review the district court’s denial of Defendants’ motion for a new trial because the ruling was made by a successor judge who did not oversee the trial; and (2) affirming the district court’s denial of Defendants’ motion for a new trial on grounds that the verdict was excessive. The Supreme Court held: (1) because it reviews claims of excessive verdicts de novo, it did not need to adopt a new standard of review for decisions of successor judges assigned under the circumstances of this case, as requested by Defendants, and the Court declined to do so; and (2) under current law, substantial evidence supported the verdict and the record did not reflect that the verdict was tainted by passion or prejudice. The Court therefore affirmed the Court of Appeals. View "Morga v. FedEx Ground Package Sys., Inc." on Justia Law

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Following the death of Patricia Lewis (Worker), her widower Michael Lewis (Petitioner) was awarded death benefits under the Workers’ Compensation Act. The Workers’ Compensation Judge (WCJ) based the award on the finding that Worker, while employed with Albuquerque Public Schools (Employer), contracted allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) which proximately resulted in Worker’s death. Employer appealed the award to the Court of Appeals. Pertinent here, the appellate court concluded: (1) the WCJ correctly rejected Employer’s argument that Petitioner’s claim for death benefits was time-barred; and (2) he WCJ erred in excluding from evidence certain medical testimony and records which Employer contended related to Worker’s cause of death. The Court of Appeals therefore remanded the case for retrial on whether Worker’s ABPA “‘proximately result[ed]’” in her death. On the first issue, the New Mexico Supreme Court agreed with the Court of Appeals that Petitioner’s claim for death benefits was not time-barred, and affirmed. On the second issue concerning the WCJ’s exclusion of medical testimony and evidence on Worker’s cause of death, the Supreme Court held the Court of Appeals erred in its interpretation of Section 52-1-51(C), but agreed based on the Supreme Court's own interpretation of Section 52-1-51(C) that the case had to be remanded for further proceedings. In all other respects, the opinion of the Court of Appeals was affirmed. View "Lewis v. Albuquerque Public Schools" on Justia Law

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In a wrongful death action, the jury returned a special verdict that awarded damages to the individual loss-of-consortium claimants but not to the decedent’s estate. The decedent’s surviving spouse and children (collectively Plaintiffs) filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that the award of zero damages to the estate was not supported by substantial evidence. The issue before the New Mexico Supreme Court was whether Plaintiffs waived the right to challenge the jury verdict on appeal by failing to object to the verdict prior to the jury’s discharge. After review, the Supreme Court concluded that they did: “A party is deemed to have waived a challenge to an ambiguous, inconsistent, or incomplete jury verdict if the party had an opportunity to raise the objection before the jury was discharged but failed to do so.” In this case, Plaintiffs created ambiguity in the verdict by modifying the uniform jury instruction on wrongful death damages and drafting the special verdict form in a way that failed to advise jurors how to allocate damages between the individual loss-of-consortium claimants and the decedent’s estate. During its deliberations, the jury submitted a question to the district court which confirmed that the jury was confused about how to allocate damages on the special verdict form. As a result of this confusion, it was unclear whether the jury deliberately intended to award zero wrongful death damages to the estate or whether the jury mistakenly included wrongful death damages in its award to the individual claimants. View "Saenz v. Ranack Constructors, Inc." on Justia Law

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This case arose out of a dispute between insureds, Nancy Vigil and her stepson Martin Vigil, and their insurance company, Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, as to whether the Vigils’ policy was in effect at the time of a November 4, 2002, car accident. The parties’ dispute has been the subject of two jury trials and two appeals to the Court of Appeals. The New Mexico Supreme Court limited its review to the propriety of two evidentiary rulings that the district court made prior to the second trial. The Court of Appeals held that the district court erred by excluding evidence at the second trial of: (1) a previous judge’s summary judgment ruling that the Vigils lacked coverage on the date of the accident, a ruling that had been reversed in “Progressive I;” and (2) Progressive’s payment of $200,000 under the Vigils’ policy to settle third-party claims while this litigation was pending. The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and held the district court acted within its discretion to exclude the evidence under Rule 11-403 19 NMRA, which permitted the district court to “exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.” The case was remanded back to the Court of Appeals to address the remaining issues that Progressive raised on appeal. View "Progressive Cas. Co. v. Vigil" on Justia Law

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The New Mexico Supreme Court concluded that the minor children of a parent whom they allege was wrongfully shot and killed by a law enforcement officer could: (1) sue for loss of consortium damages under the New Mexico Tort Claims Act (TCA); and (2) bring their lawsuit even if the parent’s estate did not sue for wrongful death damages. The Court held Section 41-4-12 of the TCA waived a law enforcement officer’s sovereign immunity from liability for personal injury and bodily injury damages resulting from battery, and loss of consortium damages may be characterized as either personal or bodily injury damages. Second, loss of consortium damages result from the wrongful injury or death of someone who was in a sufficiently close relationship to the loss of consortium claimant, and such damages belong to the loss of consortium claimant and not to the injured person or the decedent’s estate. View "Thompson v. City of Albuquerque" on Justia Law

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The United States District Court for the District of New Mexico certified a question of New Mexico law to the state Supreme Court. The question centered on whether a worker injured in the course of employment by a co-worker operating an employer owned motor vehicle was a person “legally entitled to recover damages” under his employer’s uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage. Andrew Vasquez was killed at the workplace after being struck by a steel beam that fell off of a forklift during the course of his employment at Coronado Wrecking and Salvage. A coworker operating the forklift had jumped off to check whether the steel beam being lifted was secure, leaving the forklift unattended as the steel beam slid off of the forks, striking and killing Vasquez. Plaintiff, Vasquez’s estate, subsequently collected workers’ compensation benefits from Coronado’s workers’ compensation carrier. Related to the forklift accident, Plaintiff also collected uninsured motorist benefits under Vasquez’s own automobile insurance policy.The certified question from the district court arose from an alleged discontinuity among the plain language of New Mexico’s Workers’ Compensation Act (WCA), the Uninsured Motorist statute, and the New Mexico Court’s case law. Because the WCA provided the exclusive remedy for an employee injured in a workplace accident by an employer or its representative, the employee was not legally entitled to recover damages from the uninsured employer tortfeasor under the Uninsured Motorist statute. The Court therefore answered the certified question in the negative. View "Vasquez v. American Cas. Co. of Reading" on Justia Law