Henricksen v. State

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Questions Presented

1. Whether partial summary judgment establishing the State's duty and breach was proper.
2. Whether the District Court properly bifurcated liability from damages and separately bifurcated Kristin's and Hunter's damages.
3. Whether the State was entitled to discovery of Kristin's medical and mental-health records and other financial, educational, and employment records.
4. Whether the District Court properly prohibited the State from deposing or calling Hunter as a witness.
5. Whether the State was entitled to an independent medical examination of Kristin and to present expert testimony from Dr. David Price.
6. Whether evidence of unrelated life stressors, prior counseling, and a prior fall at the library was properly excluded.
7. Whether the jury instructions concerning emotional distress and loss of established course of life were legally correct.
8. Whether videotapes of Hunter were properly excluded.
9. Whether jurors who had read a newspaper article about the accident should have been excused for cause.

Holdings

1. The State owed Kristin and Hunter a duty of ordinary care to maintain the MSU library stairway and balcony in a reasonably safe condition, and the State breached that duty as a matter of law by failing to remedy, remove, or warn of the dangerous baluster spacing after receiving notice of a prior similar fall.
2. The District Court did not abuse its discretion by bifurcating liability from damages and by separately bifurcating Kristin's and Hunter's damages.
3. The District Court erred by denying the State access to medical and mental-health records relevant to determining whether Kristin's claimed condition resulted from a preexisting cause.
4. The District Court did not abuse its discretion by protecting Kristin's financial documents, school transcripts, and personnel records.
5. The District Court did not abuse its discretion by protecting Hunter from deposition and excluding him as a trial witness.
6. The District Court erred by denying the State's timely request for an independent medical examination of Kristin.
7. The District Court abused its discretion by excluding Dr. Price's testimony as a discovery sanction.
8. The District Court properly excluded evidence of unrelated life stressors and prior counseling because the State did not establish a probable causal connection between those matters and Kristin's claimed injuries.
9. The prior fall was potentially relevant to Kristin's emotional-distress damages because learning of it after Hunter's accident could make her psychological-injury claim more probable. The District Court therefore erred to the extent it excluded the evidence solely because Kristin did not contemporaneously perceive the prior accident; admissibility remained subject to Rule 403.
10. The jury instruction was incorrect because it omitted the requirement that emotional distress be severe or serious. PTSD or another physical manifestation of emotional distress may constitute evidence that the distress is genuine and severe.
11. Emotional-distress damages and loss-of-established-course-of-life damages are separate claims with different elements and compensable interests, and separate recovery is permitted when supported by the evidence.
12. The District Court did not abuse its discretion by excluding edited home videotapes of Hunter because they did not supplement testimony or clarify an issue and were not sufficiently representative of his life.
13. The District Court did not abuse its discretion by denying challenges for cause to jurors who had read a newspaper article but stated that they could remain impartial.

Key quotations

Factual background

On November 2, 1995, three-year-old Hunter Henricksen slipped between widely spaced balusters in an open second-story stairwell at the Montana State University library and fell approximately twenty feet, suffering serious head injuries. Kristin Henricksen witnessed the accident and learned within hours that another child had fallen through the same stairway weeks earlier. She asserted emotional-distress, loss-of-consortium, and post-traumatic-stress claims, while Hunter sought damages for medical expenses, loss of enjoyment of life, and pain and suffering.

Procedural history

Kristin Henricksen sued the State and Montana State University after her three-year-old son fell through stairway balusters at an MSU library. The District Court granted partial summary judgment establishing duty and breach, bifurcated liability and damages, excluded or limited various discovery and trial evidence, and entered judgment after a jury verdict against the State, reduced by 20 percent for Kristin's comparative negligence. The Supreme Court affirmed the liability ruling and several evidentiary rulings but reversed rulings concerning medical-record discovery, an independent medical examination, expert testimony, and evidence of a prior fall, requiring a new trial on damages.

Remand instructions

Remand for a new trial on damages. On remand, the District Court must permit discovery of relevant medical and mental-health records, allow the requested independent medical examination, permit Dr. Price to testify subject to ordinary evidentiary rules, reconsider admissibility of evidence concerning the prior fall under Rule 403, and give an emotional-distress instruction requiring severe or serious distress while recognizing that shock, illness, or other bodily harm may establish that requirement.