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Horvitz & Levy persuaded the California Court of Appeal to reject arguments that the trial court failed to properly answer questions from the jury during deliberations.

Plaintiff was injured when she fell while leaving a yacht party on New Year’s Eve. Plaintiff sued the manufacturer of the yacht’s stairs, arguing that the stairs were defectively designed because they were designed to be sold with either one or two handrails at the customer’s option and did not include two handrails as a mandatory feature. During deliberations, the jury asked whether the design of the stairs included only the design itself, or also included the selling of the stairs. The trial court agreed to answer the question “yes” as plaintiff’s counsel requested. Because that answer was ambiguous given the jury’s disjunctive question, the jury asked for further clarification. With plaintiff’s counsel’s consent, the court then instructed the jury to review the as-given instructions and clarify their question. The jury then promptly returned a complete defense verdict, without clarifying their question. Plaintiff appealed and the manufacturer retained Horvitz & Levy to defend the defense judgment.

On appeal, plaintiff argued that the jury’s questions reflected confusion about whether, even though the stairs were designed so they could have two handrails, the jury could still find the manufacturer negligent and at fault for selling them with only one. Plaintiff argued that the jury would have found in her favor had they been correctly instructed that the manufacturer could be liable for selling the stairs without the second handrail, if that rendered them unsafe for their foreseeable use. The Court of Appeal agreed with Horvitz & Levy’s arguments that plaintiff established no error in the trial court’s responses to the jury’s questions. Plaintiff invited the initial “yes” answer and failed to object to the second answer.