Court throws out $1.2-million award to woman injured in crash caused by texting trolley driver

The Massachusetts Court of Appeals today ordered a new trial to determine how much the MBTA owes a woman who suffered serious neck injuries when Green Line operator Aiden Quinn plowed through a red light and crashed into another trolley in 2009, saying her lawyer manipulated the jury's emotions by repeatedly raising issues not supported by any evidence during the trial.

"The sheer number of counsel's acts of misconduct cannot be minimized or overlooked," the court said, in tossing a Suffolk Superior Court's 2012 verdict in favor of Colleen Fyffe of Scituate.

In its ruling, the court noted the T stipulated before the trial that its driver was to blame for the crash and said this meant the only issue at trial should have been Fyffe's medical condition following the crash and how that would affect her future earnings.

But, the court continued, her lawyer, Michael Rezendes, repeatedly raised issues in his opening and closing statements that had nothing to do with that. At one point he told the jury it should hold the T to account "for its choice to save the money on a seat without a head restraint," at another point he told jurors her injuries could, at any moment turn her into a quadriplegic even though he had earlier agreed with the judge that was not the case. During his closing, he urged jurors to act as "the conscience of the community."

The court ruled that although the judge in the case sustained objections from the T's attorney on many of these points, Rezendes's arguments were so egregious it could not rule out the possibility the jury's award was based on them.

In this case, in which the evidence unfolded over the course of only two days, the improper remarks permeated the opening and closing arguments, with plaintiff's experienced counsel deliberately disregarding the judge's directives and pretrial rulings, openly arguing with her, and defiantly, forcefully, and repeatedly making irrelevant and prejudicial statements.

We do not believe the judge's final charge was sufficient to counter the damage.