NEW ORLEANS - A jury verdict for LG Electronics should stand, a Louisiana appeals court says, as the company has defeated claims its window-unit air condition did not contain a defect that started a house fire.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal ruled July 31 that Judge Jeanne Nunez Juneau, of St. Bernard Parish District Court, was wrong to order a new trial after jurors found the air condition was not the cause of a 2017 fire at Tammy Martinez's house in Meraux.
She bought the unit at Home Depot in July and a few days later, a fire broke out. No one was hurt in the fire, and the St. Bernard Fire Department was unable to determine the cause of it.
Martinez filed a redhibition suit, seeking to prove the unit contained a defect and that she would not have purchased it had she known.
It took six years for the case to make it to trial. She had electrical engineer Ted Kaplon testify the fire started in the window with the unit and that the unit had damage to a printed circuit board inside it, showing the fire started there.
LG testimony included the recorded deposition of SBPFD assistant chief Charles Licciardi, Jr., who investigated the fire. He said the origin was in a window of a room on the second floor that had been removed and was on the front lawn when he arrived on scene.
There were some electronics in the room, like computer equipment.
"So do I know that the fire originated because of the A/C unit? No," he testified.
"Was it in the area where I'm confident that the fire started? Yes."
The jury returned a verdict for LG, leading to post-trial motions from Martinez's lawyer, H. Adam Hays of New Orleans. Judge Juneau denied his motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict but granted a motion for a new trial.
Martinez and Hays said circumstantial evidence and Kaplon's testimony was enough to show the fire started in the air conditioner, though he could not point to a specific defect in it.
Judge Juneau found jury confusion warranted a new trial because of Licciardi's limited investigation for arson, while Kaplon's expert testimony was uncontradicted. Plus, the only eyewitness said in a video deposition flames were coming out of the unit.
"None of the three cited reasons is sufficient alone, or taken together, to establish a miscarriage of justice, which is required to grant a new trial," Judge Rosemary Ledet wrote for the Fourth Circuit.
Licciardi explained in his testimony that there was more to his investigation than determining whether arson was involved, Ledet added. And the jury was free to not take Kaplon's word even though it was uncontradicted in court, Ledet found.
The eyewitness testimony of a neighbor checking his mail who saw smoke coming out of the unit only meant the fire could have started elsewhere and the unit was blowing smoke from the room out its back via a fan, the court said.