By Rick Stoff
LAS VEGAS – A Nevada district court judge denied Motor Coach Industries’ motions for a limited new trial or a judgment overturning an $18.7-million jury award following a bicyclist’s fatal collision with a motorcoach.
MCI has appealed these rulings to the Nevada Supreme Court, contending that the jury did not link the fatality to a vehicle defect and that information arising after the trial creates suspicions that the bicyclist may not have struck the bus accidentally.
Kayvan Khiabani, 51, was killed on April 20, 2017, while riding his bicycle along a road. Witnesses said the hand surgeon appeared to veer left into the side of a passing MCI motorcoach and fall into its path.
During a one-month trial before Clark County District Court Judge Adriana Escobar, attorneys for Khiabani’s sons alleged that the 2008 MCI J4500 motorcoach carried defects including an aerodynamic design that could cause a wind blast to pull in bicyclists. They also claimed the coach lacked proximity sensors to warn of a bicyclist’s presence.
The jurors returned a verdict finding none of the alleged defects “made the coach unreasonably dangerous and a legal cause of Dr. Khiabani’s death.” The jurors then answered “yes” to another question on the verdict form, “Did MCI fail to provide an adequate warning that would have been acted upon?” before awarding damages.
MCI filed a motion for “a judgment as a matter of law” because the verdict form did not specifically ask jurors whether “the failure to warn” was a cause of the accident.
Judgment denied
In a hearing held Aug. 27, Escobar denied the MCI motion. Her opinion states, “Plaintiffs need not prove precisely how the facts would have been different had there been an adequate warning as this would amount to speculation.”
Her opinion continued, “The failure-to-warn claim does not ask whether the coach created an air disturbance but whether the coach was unreasonably dangerous due to the air disturbance it created… was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that any air disturbance created by the coach was unreasonably dangerous and that the injury could have been avoided by an adequate warning.”
New trial denied
Escobar also denied MCI’s motion for a limited new trial in which a jury would consider whether the “failure to warn” of air disturbance was a cause of the accident. “The Court does not find that the absence of causation on the question was prejudicial to the defendant.”
The judge also denied MCI’s motion for a new trial due to new information that became public after the trial about Khiabani’s professional status.
A Las Vegas television station reporter obtained a long-hidden audit of billing problems at the University of Nevada-Reno medical school where Khiabani practiced hand surgery. On the day of the fatal accident, the reporter found, Khiabani had been told he was losing his job.
Some of his colleagues told the reporter they immediately were suspicious that the fatal collision was not accidental.
The audit “uncovered widespread billing errors and serious lack of oversight” at University of Nevada-Reno medical clinics. The “blatant billing problems” included “overbilling of Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance,” the station reported.
Khiabani’s salary and benefits for 2016 were listed at $1,040,001.49 by the public service website Transparent Nevada.
At the time of the accident, University of Nevada medical practices were being transferred from the Reno campus to Las Vegas. The television station obtained an email stating that Khiabani was told on the day of the accident he would not be hired at University of Nevada-Las Vegas “and that his behavior should be reported to the medical board and federal government.”
The MCI motion for a new trial stated that the Khiabani family attorneys “had an affirmative duty to obtain and disclose the information” and that “the judgment must be set aside for fraud on the court. A new trial is necessary even if plaintiffs were unaware. The new evidence casts doubts on the jury’s determination of damages and even liability.”
Escobar’s denial of this motion placed responsibility for pre-trial discovery of this information on MCI. “The court does not agree that the newly discovered evidence warrants a new trial. The court has not been convinced that the new evidence could not have been found with reasonable diligence.”
The MCI appeal to the Supreme Court, filed the day of Escobar’s ruling, stresses the failure of the verdict form to ask jurors to affirmatively link the “failure to warn” with “a proximate or legal cause of injuries.”
The appeal also addresses the previously unknown information regarding Khiabani’s employment. MCI asks the Supreme Court to determine “whether the district court abused its discretion in denying a new trial in light of newly discovered evidence.”
