$1.9-Million Verdict Against District Rejected

Ruling that a lawyer’s “inappropriate” conduct had “tainted the trial,” a judge Wednesday tossed out a $1.9-million verdict against the Simi Valley Unified School District in the case of a former student struck by a car while crossing the street on her way to school.

The decision could lead to a new trial. If so, it would be the third jury trial in the case’s convoluted, seven-year history.

In May, a jury found the district partly liable for the 1989 accident in which Jennifer Joyce, then 13 years old, was hit in a crosswalk at Medina and Sequoia avenues on her way to Sequoia Junior High School. But the district requested a new trial, arguing that Joyce’s lawyer, Ian Herzog, had repeatedly asked leading questions of witnesses and referred to evidence that had been deemed inadmissible by the court.

Judge Joe Hadden, who presided over the second trial, agreed that a third trial was justified.

“In this close case, the inappropriate, misleading conduct so tainted the trial as to deprive the school district of a fair trial,” Hadden said.

Herzog is out of the country and was therefore unable to attend Wednesday’s court hearing, said Evan D. Marshall, another lawyer at Herzog’s Santa Monica firm. But Marshall argued in court that the judge should let stand the May verdict, which, he said, was reached by a competent jury that had carefully considered the evidence.

“You don’t come into this court in Simi Valley and get a judgment against the school district without some pretty solid evidence,” Marshall said.

Neither Joyce nor her family could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The long-running case initially included both the district and the city of Simi Valley as defendants. In the action, Joyce’s family complained that by creating an opening in a schoolyard fence near the crosswalk, the district had created a dangerous condition.

At the end of the first trial, in 1994, a jury found in favor of the city and the district. But citing a procedural error in the trial, an appeals court overturned the verdict concerning the district.

Attorney Korman Ellis, representing the school district, complained at Wednesday’s hearing that during the second trial Herzog had repeatedly asked leading questions, incorporating information unsupported by the evidence presented to the jury. Those questions, Ellis argued, could create a false impression in the minds of jurors, leading them to believe the information Herzog had used was established fact.

“The leading questions became more than testimony, [they] became the cornerstone of the plaintiff’s unproven liability case,” Ellis wrote in his motion to the court asking it to set aside the jury’s verdict and order another trial.

Ellis also complained about Herzog mentioning brain damage suffered by Joyce during a part of the trial that did not concern injuries. Joyce had been in a coma for 22 days after the accident. But Marshall argued it was a legitimate point to raise.

“How could it not be relevant?” he asked.

Hadden now has 10 days to file his written decision. Attorneys representing Joyce’s family will then have 60 days in which to appeal.