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The Indiana Court of Appeals will hold oral arguments next week in a case involving Tesla Inc., with the company appealing a Marion Superior Court jury award of more than $42 million to an Avon man for serious injuries he suffered in a 2017 motorcycle crash with a pickup truck driven by one of the company’s employees.
The hearing is scheduled for Nov. 10, from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., the University of Notre Dame’s Eck Hall of Law, with Judges Melissa May, Nancy Vaidik and Elizabeth Tavitas serving as panelists.
In March 2024, the Marion County jury awarded $60.7 million to the estate of Christopher Dugan, after Dugan was involved in a motorcycle accident with a Tesla employee, Kyle Kaszuba, who was driving a vehicle owned by the company.
Nick Rowley, a trial attorney representing Dugan and a co-founder of Trial Lawyers for Justice, told The Indiana Lawyer following the verdict that it was “hands down a $60 million verdict” for Dugan, with the award amount reduced to $42.4 million due to Dugan being found by the jury to have 30% comparative fault.
He said at the time that the trial was the first Indiana case to be televised nationally by Courtroom View Network.
Tesla appealed that judgment and has requested a new trial, with the company alleging the trial court gave an impermissible “Allen charge” to the jury and interrupted the jury’s deliberation with ex parte communications, instructing them that the court was intending to declare a mistrial because the jury was deadlocked.
“The result was a $60.7 million verdict against Defendants Kaszuba and Tesla—one of the largest jury verdicts in Indiana history—an excessive damages award resulting from this series of errors and motivated by improper considerations,” stated Tesla in its appellant brief.
Dugan’s attorneys disagreed, emphasizing that Tesla “received a fair trial,” and that no Allen charge, an additional charge given by a trial judge to an apparently deadlocked jury, was given.
“A review of the relevant case law and the trial court record demonstrates that the trial court did not give an ‘Allen charge,'” stated Dugan’s attorneys in their appellee brief. “And even if the trial court’s short conversation with the jury could be considered an ‘Allen charge,’ reversal is not required.”
Dugan suffered a severe traumatic brain injury from the accident, requiring life-saving surgery and has widespread and permanent damage across nearly all brain regions, resulting in moderate to severe impairments throughout “nearly every cognitive domain.”
Dugan’s estate then filed a complaint against Kaszuba and Tesla, arguing that Kaszuba was driving the truck in the scope and course of his employment and with the express permission of Tesla.
According to court documents, in 2017, Kaszuba began his morning commute to Tesla’s Indianapolis service center, where he worked as a technician. Kaszuba was driving a Tesla-owned service truck that morning, which he had planned to return that day after using it late in the afternoon the day prior.
Heading to work, Kaszuba noticed the truck was low on gas, so, per a company “courtesy”, he decided to fill it up at a gas station on the way. Tesla states that it has no company policy requiring employees to fill the service truck on their morning commute or otherwise.
Kaszuba drove into the center lane on Rockville Road to turn left into a Speedway. When Kazsuba turned left to pull into the station, he and Dugan suddenly collided.
Dugan, who was reportedly riding a motorcycle without a helmet, was behind a pickup truck when he turned right to exit the gas station.
According to an expert reconstructionist’s testimony, the truck obscured Dugan from Kaszuba’s view until Dugan entered an established lane of traffic less than three seconds before the collision. That amount of time, the expert conceded, was “more likely than not” that Kaszuba would have been unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
During the trial in March 2024, the court and counsel believed the jury was at an impasse. According to the defendants’ brief, the court sent several notes, many at Tesla’s objection, to the presiding juror asking about the impasse.
Because of this, the judge said, “I’m going to declare a mistrial.” The judge went to speak with the jury to inform them what had happened, but when the judge went into the jury room, “the jury indicated that they had changed their mind” and “that they would like to have the opportunity to deliberate.”
The court then “ungranted” its mistrial, and within 30 minutes of calling the jury in for an ex-post Rule 28 conference with counsel, the jury reached a verdict to award $60,867,491 in damages, with over $40 million of it being awarded to the Plaintiff.
According to court documents, after the jury reached the verdict, the judge explained that when “I told the jury that I was intending to declare a mistrial, the looks on their faces was shock and amazement. And they immediately said no.”
Tesla contends that courts are not allowed to have unauthorized ex parte communications with a deliberating jury, and that Indiana law precludes any “Allen charge” once deliberations have started.
“Yet, after instructing the deadlocked jury of the consequences of failing to reach a verdict and being met with ‘shock’ and ‘amazement,’ the court permitted the jury—which had declared an impasse three times, including minutes before the court’s ex parte communication—to continue to deliberate,” stated the appellant’s brief.
Dugan;s attorneys arguethat Tesla has failed to prove the court actually gave an “Allen charge.”
“Tesla points to no evidence to support its contention that the trial court’s statement—that she intended to declare a mistrial—caused the jury to alter its deliberations,” stated the appellee’s brief. “The jury had decided, before the judge entered the jury room, that it wanted to continue to deliberate.”
According to the Dugan attorneys, Tesla’s argument rests on a “misreading of the record.”
The case is Kyle Kaszuba and Tesla, Inc. v. AnnaMarie Dugan Norris, as Guardian of the Estate of Christopher Dugan (25A-CT-198).
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