NO ABUSE OF DISCRETION IN DENYING DEFENDANT’S MOTION FOR MISTRIAL AND RENEWED MOTIONS FOR MISTRIAL DIRECTED AT CUMULATIVE EFFECT OF THE COURTROOM CONDUCT OF THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE AND HER FAMILY
Miami-Dade County v. Malpica, 50 Fla. L. Weekly D2037 (Fla. 3rd DCA Sept. 10, 2025):
The personal representative’s husband was killed in an accident with a police car. The woman filed suit against the county. The trial court bifurcated the case.
During opening statements of the liability phase, the trial court noticed that the plaintiff was crying. The court immediately stopped the proceedings and had the jury escorted from the courtroom. The county raised no objection and after a 10-minute break the opening statements resumed.
On the second day of trial, the bailiff saw a woman in the back of the courtroom who appeared to be using her cell phone to record the trial. Later that day, the plaintiff’s counsel informed the court that the woman in question was the plaintiff’s mother-in-law who was using her phone for Google Translate to provide an English to Spanish translation because she spoke no English. The county raised no objection to this.
Before the lunch break, the county’s attorney did, however, advise the trial court that the attorney had seen the plaintiff wearing under a long-sleeved black robe a shirt depicting a photo of the decedent and their infant child. Other than questioning whether the shirt was an appropriate garment for the courtroom, the county attorney raised no specific objection to the shirt, nor did the attorney request a curative instruction or seek a mistrial. The trial court agreed that the plaintiff should keep the shirt covered, and the parties adjourned for lunch.
After the lunch break, the county’s attorney advised the trial court that the attorney had learned that an emotional exchange had occurred between the plaintiff and her family in front of the jury during a side bar. When the trial court asked the bailiff what had happened, the bailiff explained that during the sidebar conference, the plaintiff’s brother approached the plaintiff’s counsel’s table to greet her and embraced her. The plaintiff then went back to the back of the courtroom and hugged her parents who then left. The bailiff responded that there were no strange reactions or any expressions on the faces from the jurors.
At some point, the county’s attorney moved for a mistrial based on the purported cumulative “sympathetic” effect of these issues on the jurors. The trial court denied the county’s motion, deciding instead to give a curative instruction to remind the jurors that sympathy, bias, and other sentiments should not influence its decision.
The jury returned a verdict for the estate on liability and then conducted a trial on damages the next day. It then reached a damages verdict in the amount of $3 million, approximately 11% of the damages sought by the plaintiff. The county moved for a mistrial based on the cumulative prejudicial effect of the allegedly emotional exchanges, the cell phone issue and the shirt that the plaintiff was wearing. After the trial court denied it, and after the verdict, the county moved for a new trial which the trial court also denied.
In performing the review, the court observed that it gives deference to the trial court’s better vantage point. It noted that trial courts should not grant mistrials unless an absolute legal necessity exists to do so, and that a mistrial is only appropriate where the error is so prejudicial as to vitiate the entire trial.
As with any other error that occurs throughout a civil trial, when a person engages in objectionable conduct in the courtroom, the contemporaneous objection rule applies to preserve the issue for appellate review, and a party must object to the improper conduct when it occurs stating a legal ground for the objection. If the trial court sustains the objection, the party must either timely move for a mistrial or request a curative instruction.
The county made no contemporaneous objection to the plaintiff crying, the cell phone use, or the clothing. The incidents, whether viewed individually or collectively, did not constitute fundamental error.
The only objected-to incident, the plaintiff embracing her family, did not constitute reversible error.
Certainly, an emotional outburst has the capacity to subject a jury to undue sympathy, but the burden is still on the appellant to establish that the verdict is wholly unsupported by the evidence or the result of passion, prejudice, or other improper motive.
Here, there was nothing in the record to suggest that the plaintiff’s interactions with her family in the courtroom were so intense as to inflame the passions of the jury. The damages awarded by the jury did not suggest that the incident prejudiced the jury against the county in any way as they were only a fraction of the amount of the damages sought by the estate.
Thus, under these circumstances the trial court did not abuse its discretion by giving a curative instruction and denying the mistrial.