Injured Abroad, Redressed at Home
In a recent decision handed down by the New Jersey Supreme Court, plaintiffs injured in a car accident South Africa were allowed to move forward with their lawsuit against the defendants, which included the driver of the car the plaintiffs were passengers in at the time of the accident and the driver’s employer, in New Jersey.
Plaintiffs, Amin Yousef and Crane Robinson, were civilian employees of the United States Army whose work took them to South Africa where they were working in cooperation with members of a team of employees from General Dynamics-Ordnance and Tactical Systems, Inc., a Virginia-based company doing business in New Jersey. One member of the General Dynamics team was David Edmonds.
During the same trip, Edmonds rented a van. One evening, while driving himself and three other passengers, including the plaintiffs, Edmonds drove through a stop sign. The van was broadsided by a vehicle travelling through the same intersection. As a result of the collision, Yousef and Robinson were badly injured. They received immediate medical attention in South Africa and were later transferred to hospitals in New Jersey.
A year after the accident, Yousef and Robinson filed separate personal-injury complaints in New Jersey state court alleging that Edmonds, an agent of General Dynamics, had operated the rental van negligently by driving through the stop sign, thereby causing the accident which resulted in their injuries. At the conclusion of pre-trial discovery, the defendants moved to dismiss the action on grounds of forum non conveniens, “arguing that a South African court was the more appropriate forum for deciding the issues to be resolved in [the] case.” Yousef v. General Dynamics Corp.
The defendants appealed and the Appellate Division affirmed. The New Jersey Supreme Court granted certiorari and considered the issue.
The Supreme Court affirmed the Appellate Division. In reaching its decision, the Court undertook the public – and private-interest factor analysis that each of the lower courts did. In considering the private-interest factors, “particularly the relative ease of access to sources of proof,” the Court found that much of the relevant evidence necessary to adequately try the case was here in the United States, including the plaintiff’s medical records and the parties themselves. The Court was particularly sensitive to the fact that the intersection where the accident had occurred had been reconfigured since the time of the accident, and so “an inspection of the scene would likely yield little benefit to the factfinder.” Moreover, the Court concluded that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, there would be no “barrier to the admission of photographs and diagrams of the intersection during the relevant time period.” The Court also determined that it would be feasible to record the testimony of South Africans with knowledge of the intersection pre-reconfiguration through depositions. It also took into account the fact that the vehicles involved in the accident were missing and testimony, provided in affidavits by plaintiff Yousef’s doctors, indicating that Yousef’s injuries rendered him unable to withstand a trip to South Africa, much less an extended one. In this way, the Court concluded that the access-to-evidence factor did not weigh in defendants’ favor.
In considering the private-interest factors, the Court recognized the defendants two main arguments: 1) “South Africa has a vital stake in ensuring that individuals who drive on its roadways observe the appropriate standard of due care; and 2) South Africa has an interest in ensuring that its local municipalities protect motorists by adequately designing and maintaining roadways.” Id. at 24. With respect to the first point, the Court concluded that “the obligation to drive safely in South Africa [could] be vindicated in New Jersey.” Regarding the second point, the Court determined that “the present litigation – even if the local [South African] municipality were impleaded – would seem to have little effect on the future design of the intersection where the accident occurred,” especially since the intersection had already been redesigned. Id.
As for the public-interest factor analysis, the Court concluded that, given “this case concerns injuries caused to New Jersey residents by a corporate entity doing business in this State..., New Jersey’s interests are direct and concrete, not remote” and so it had more interest in administering the case than did the courts of South Africa.
Finding that New Jersey had substantially more interest in the outcome of the case, the Supreme Court denied the defendants’ motion for dismissal and remanded the case back to the trial court. The citation for the case is Yousef v. General Dynamics Corp., No. A-88-09, 2011 WL 1344629 (N.J. Sup. Ct. Apr. 11, 2011).
