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Kava v. American Honda Motor Co.6/14/2002
circumstances of this case compel us to conclude that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in excluding the estate's proposed jury instruction. As Honda correctly points out, the estate itself chose to join Sitnasuak as a defendant, even though the estate knew that under products liability law Honda would ultimately be responsible for any judgment.
The estate nevertheless cites Frontier Companies of Alaska, Inc. v. Jack White Co., for the proposition that indemnity agreements can be used under Alaska Evidence Rule 408 to "show the true alignment of the parties." There, we held that it was not an abuse of discretion for the trial court to allow evidence of a settlement agreement between co-defendants where, " ecause of the agreement, [one co-defendant's] representatives might be motivated to slant their testimony in [the other's] favor and vice-versa."
But Frontier is easily distinguishable from this case. In Frontier, employees of both co-defendants appeared as witnesses and the settlement agreement between them obligated both parties to pay half of any judgment against either. That situation created a potential for bias on the part of the co-defendants because of their inter-related interests in the litigation. Our ruling simply recognized that an undisclosed settlement agreement aligning the interests of co-defendants would have deceptively maintained the appearance of adversity in the litigation.
Here, by contrast, the indemnity agreement did not align Sitnasuak's interests with Honda's; it simply left Sitnasuak with no real interest in the litigation. And in the absence of evidence of the agreement, there was no deceptive appearance of adversity. Moreover, no employee or representative of Sitnasuak appeared as a witness, thus eliminating any residual possibility of actual or apparent bias. Given these circumstances, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to give the jury instruction.
IV. CONCLUSION
The decision of the trial court is AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED in part; we REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion.
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