Court of Appeals of Ohio Finds Jurors Not Disqualified Based on Being Insured by Defendant's Insurance Company

Similar to its federal counterpart, Ohio Rule of Evidence 411 provides that

Evidence that a person was or was not insured against liability is not admissible upon the issue whether the person acted negligently or otherwise wrongfully. This rule does not require the exclusion of evidence of insurance against liability when offered for another purpose, such as proof of agency, ownership or control, if controverted, or bias or prejudice of a witness.

Obviously, evidence that a party has/does not have liability insurance is thus inadmissible to prove whether the party acted negligently or otherwise wrongfully. And evidence of liability insurance can be used to show bias, such as bias by an expert witness who works for the defendant's insurance company. But does that mean that prospective jurors who are insured by the defendant's insurance company should be ineligible to serve on the jury on grounds of bias? That was the question addressed by the Court of Appeals of Ohio, Second District, in its recent opinion in Curley v. Wilcox, 2023 WL 6343070 (Ohio. App. 2024).

In Wilcox, "the Curleys filed suit against Wilcox in the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court seeking compensation for personal injuries, medical expenses, lost income, pain, suffering, disability, and emotional distress that resulted from a traffic crash caused by Wilcox."

Wilcox was covered by an automobile insurance policy with Allstate. As a result, an Allstate attorney represented Wilcox during the trial, and the defense's expert witness was hired by Allstate. Prior to trial, Wilcox filed a motion in limine asking, among other things, that the Curleys be prohibited from introducing evidence of or referring to the availability or non-availability of liability insurance. Wilcox anticipated that the Curleys would reference the existence of liability insurance either directly or indirectly by referencing defense counsel's employer, Allstate. The trial court granted the motion in part and denied it in part as it related to the admissibility of evidence about liability insurance. The trial court found that the Curleys could offer evidence of liability insurance under Evid.R. 411 to show bias or prejudice of the defense expert. However, the trial court prohibited admitting any evidence as to whether Wilcox had had liability insurance at the time of the collision.

The Curleys also argued that these facts made it so prospective jurors with Allstate insurance policies couldn't serve on the jury due to bias. The Court of Appeals of Ohio disagreed, ruling as follows:

The Curleys argue that the cases discussed above demonstrate that, where a significant and ongoing business or economic relationship between an expert witness and an insurance company alone manifests bias and the expert is presumed to harbor such bias, then this same bias should extend to prospective jurors who are policyholders of the same liability insurance company as the defendant. We do not agree...First, there is no presumption that an expert witness with a commonality of insurance is biased. As the Supreme Court of Ohio explained, “[w]here an expert has a financial incentive to be biased, the jury may determine whether that bias exists and how that bias affects all defendants who are contesting similar issues and who benefit from the expert's testimony, regardless of commonality of insurance.”...

Secondly, jurors do not have the same relationship with insurance companies as an expert witness. An expert witness may benefit from repeatedly testifying in favor of a party such that they have a bias to find in that party's favor and continue the relationship in order to receive additional payments....Or, as in the case of Ede, a commonality of mutual insurance between a defendant and an expert witness in medical malpractice actions could affect the testimony of the expert to avoid increases in premiums based on the outcome of the case. But where a prospective juror is merely a policyholder of a liability insurance company, his or her connection to the company is nothing more than a contract with the company, creating no interest in its assets, and the juror is no more potentially biased than would be a depositor in a bank that were party to litigation or a taxpayer in a city that were party to litigation....

We cannot conclude that prospective jurors are inherently biased solely because they happen to have an insurance policy with the same company defendant used to insure his automobile. The connection is far too nebulous and indirect to construct a bright line rule that all prospective jurors who are policyholders of the same insurance liability company utilized by the defendant, even when evidence of the liability insurance is introduced at trial, must be excused for bias.

-CM