West Hartford attorney Heather Adams-Beman said John Deere’s pre-trial offer of $15,000 was not a settlement offer her client “could reasonably consider under the circumstances.”

Defective Tractor Case Nets $764K Verdict

Electrical problem in John Deere mower caused house fire

By DOUGLAS S. MALAN

Metropolitan Property & Casualty Insurance v. Deere & Co.: A homeowner starts up her John Deere riding lawnmower and makes one round of her yard. The mower begins laboring and sputtering. The woman, Roula Kallivrousis, pulls the lawnmower into the garage and turns it off.

The tractor immediately backfires and belches smoke. Shortly after the air clears, Kallivrousis leaves the house with her sons, ages 10 and 13.

Two hours later, she receives a telephone call that her house is consumed by fire.

A jury in Hartford heard this story and concluded that John Deere & Co., of Moline, Ill., was responsible for the loss of the family’s home because of an electrical defect inside the homeowner’s LX178 tractor.

The homeowner’s insurance provider, Metropolitan Property & Casualty Insurance, filed a products liability subrogation claim against John Deere and attained a verdict of $764,462 from the jury, which assigned 100 percent liability on John Deere. Hartford Superior Court Judge James Bentivegna presided over the trial.

Earlier this month, the court denied the John Deere’s motion to set aside the verdict.

At dispute was the origin and cause of the 2003 fire in Cheshire, said plaintiff’s attorney Heather Adams-Beman, of Skelley Rottner in West Hartford.

She argued that the rough-riding tractor was an indication of the electrical defect that caused the fire in the garage. Adams-Beman used expert testimony from Scott Boris and Thomas Bush of NEFCO Fire Investigations in New Hampshire to stake her claim.

“Based on the condition of the tractor after the fire, there was very little left to look at,” Adams-Beman said. But there was enough to link the fire to the tractor, she noted, and her experts concluded that the damage was consistent with being an electrical problem.

And while the cause of the fire was officially listed as unknown, “state and local fire marshals indicated that the tractor was a likely item to be looked at,” Adams-Beman said.

John Deere argued that the fire started in an opposite corner of the garage and the tractor had nothing to do with the blaze.

Bruce H. Raymond, of Raymond & Bennett, in Glastonbury represented John Deere and is working on an appeal. Raymond said the verdict was “an aberration.”

“Since there was no direct evidence of product defect, the plaintiff relied on the ‘malfunction doctrine,’ which operates to relieve the plaintiff of the usual requirements of proof in product liability cases,” Raymond said. “There are serious problems with the development of the law in Connecticut.”

The Kallivrousises purchased the tractor about five years before the fire and told Adams-Beman that the tractor had been running poorly off and on during that time. The tractor had been serviced in 2002 by Connecticut Power & Sport in Wallingford but “nothing was out of order” and no changes or modifications were made to the electrical system, Adams-Beman said.

The LX178 debuted on the market in 1990, but John Deere has discontinued its production. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has no record of any recalls associated with the LX178 model. Several Internet chat rooms include threads about the model and describe problems with backfiring and loss of power, though other threads speak highly of the tractor.

Metropolitan Property & Casualty Insurance also had filed a negligence claim against Connecticut Power & Sport, but that matter was settled before trial. Two weeks before the John Deere case went to trial, the company offered Metropolitan $15,000 to settle.

“I don’t think that was an offer my clients could reasonably consider under the circumstances,” Adams-Beman said.

The jury agreed that damages were much more significant. Adams-Beman said she has never handled a products liability case of this magnitude.

Though the house that burned eventually was rebuilt, the Kallivrousises moved to a different part of Cheshire. “It was too traumatic for them to go back there,” Adams-Beman said.•

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