SOUTH JORDAN, Utah — A local car dealership is now on the hook for over $3 million dollars after losing a court appeal Friday.
The Utah Court of Appeals ruled that Volkswagen SouthTowne, Inc., must pay over $400,000 in post-judgment interest. That's on top of the over $2.7 million they were previously ordered to pay back in August 2018.
The original suit was filed in 2013, after a woman sued the car dealer for negligence after a cracked fuel line caused her to suffer carbon monoxide poisoning. After an eight day trial in June 2018, the jury awarded the woman $2.7 million in general damages, plus over $10,000 in legal fees.
The verdict and judgment were set aside after Volkswagen SouthTowne filed a motion for summary judgment, which was granted the following April, prompting an appeal from the original plaintiff. This was then reversed by the Utah Supreme Court in June 2022, who ordered the original verdict to be reinstated.
After a remand the following September, the trial court entered a new judgment identical to the original, but also imposed interest that had accrued since the original ruling, prompting yet another appeal.
According to the opinion written by Judge David Mortensen, the dealership argued against the awarding of post-judgment interest on the grounds the court misinterpreted the interest statute, and violated the mandate rule, specifically taking issue with the fact that the court relied on a 1956 court case, Hewitt v. General Tire & Rubber Co., as precedent.
The crux of the first argument was that the statute pertaining to post-judgment interest and been amended multiple times since that first case, first in 1999 and then in 2014, where the state legislature added language that indicated interest would begin accruing after a final judgment, when all other legal options had been exhausted. A more recent amendment came in 2017 that removed that definition. Judge Mortensen countered that the ruling in 2018 was a final judgment under the modern statute.
"There was nothing left to be decided beyond whether to file an appeal and later whether to grant a motion for judgment as a matter of law," Judge Mortensen writes. "[Plaintiff] should not lose her interest because Volkswagen 'was able to convince the trial court to make an erroneous ruling.'"
When it came to the second argument, Volkswagen SouthTowne's main point came down to the use of language regarding the original verdict. The Utah Supreme Court had ordered the verdict "reinstated," rather than "revitalized," arguing that since the language was different, the cited case could not be used as precedent.
Judge Mortensen countered saying the court's intentions were quite clear in the context of the case at-large.
"This slight difference in language is immaterial," Mortensen writes. "Its effect is to revitalize both the verdict and judgment when a judgment as a matter of law is reversed."
