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$8 million award against Hyundai reversed again on appeal
 An $8.1 million judgment against Hyundai Motor Co. over the collapse of a front seat in a crash has been overturned a second time on appeal.
A split three-judge panel of the Washington state Court of Appeals ruled that the trial judge erred in the last trial. The judge's mistake was reinstating a jury award after finding the South Korean automaker deliberately withheld key documents in the case brought by Jesse Magana, 49, of Vancouver, the panel ruled.
Magana rode in the front passenger seat of a rented 1996 Hyundai Accent when the driver swerved to avoid an oncoming truck and hit two trees in 1997. The force of the air bag apparently broke the seat's reclining mechanism and Magana, who had been wearing a seat belt, was thrown out the back of the hatchback.
He was left paralyzed and a woman in the back seat wound up with a broken leg when the seat crashed down onto her.
In 2002, a Clark County Superior Court jury found that Hyundai's seat design was faulty and awarded Magana $8.1 million. That verdict was overturned in 2004 when an appellate panel found that Judge Barbara D. Johnson should have told jurors to disregard testimony from a witness.
In January 2006, just before the case was to go to trial a second time, Johnson rebuked Hyundai for failing to disclose seat-back failures in similar cases around the United States as required in pretrial procedures. She entered the same award.
In reversing Johnson a second time, Judges Marywave Van Deren and Christine Quinn-Brintnall agreed with nearly all of her findings but said a default judgment was "tantamount to awarding Magana a several million dollar verdict without requiring him to prove his case."
In a dissent, Judge C.C. Bridgewater wrote that Johnson was well within her rights.
In announcing the appeal nearly two years ago, a Hyundai spokesman said the company was confident of winning the case if it went before a jury again.
A lawyer for Magana, Derek J. Vanderwood, said he would likely ask the state Supreme Court to reinstate the default judgment.
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