Ciara v. Atlantic Motors, LLC

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, N and J, filed separate actions, which were later consolidated for trial, alleging, inter alia, that the defendants misrepresented the mileage on the odometers of two motor vehicles that the plaintiffs allegedly purchased from one of the defendants. Several of the defen- dants were defaulted for failure to appear, and the plaintiffs withdrew their complaints against several other defendants. At the time of trial, the defendants consisted of N Co. and three individual defendants. On the first day of trial, counsel for the plaintiffs, T, indicated his intention to present the testimony of the plaintiffs and the individual defendants. C, who appeared at trial on behalf of N Co., subsequently filed an appearance on behalf of each of the individual defendants and indicated that they had no intention of testifying in this case, that he did not plan to put them on the stand, and that T had not subpoenaed them, deposed them, or tried to interview them. On the second day of trial, T indicated to the court that the day before he had subpoenaed the individual defendants through C, who he claimed had indicated on his appearance that he agreed to accept service of all documents. C responded that T had sent him emails asking him to serve his clients with subpoenas and, therefore, had not properly subpoenaed the defendants. The court ruled that T's emails to C were not sufficient to comply with the requirement for the service of a subpoena and declined to enforce the subpoenas. During the trial, T attempted to introduce two Carfax reports related to the motor vehicles at issue. T attempted to admit evidence contained in the first report through the testimony of N. C objected on the basis that the report was hearsay, and the court sustained the objection. T showed the second report to J during his testimony but indicated that he was using the report to refresh J's memory, not to enter it into evidence. After the trial, the court rendered judgments for the defen- dan