Financial Services Vehicle Trust v. Panter, 458 N.J. Super. 244 (App. Div. 2019). This appeal actually involved four consolidated cases, all of them originating in the Small Claims Part of the Superior Court. In each case, the plaintiff had been in an auto accident. Each plaintiff sought compensation not only for the physical damage to his or her vehicle, but also for the alleged devaluation of the vehicle to the “stigma of having been in an accident,” even though the vehicles had been repaired to their pre-accident condition. Defendants contended that such “stigma damages” were too speculative to be cognizable.
Plaintiffs won each case after a Small Claims trial. On appeal, the Appellate Division, with Judge Fisher writing the opinion, held that “a motor vehicle owner–-like the owner of any other chattel-–may recover for an additional reduction in value when a vehicle has become less desirable for resale because of the stigma of having once been damaged.” Databases such as CarFax reveal a vehicle’s accident history, and that sort of “scarlet letter,” Judge Fisher said, “is just another factor that bears on value and is recoverable if supported by sufficient proof.”
Stigma damages are not speculative, the panel said. Judge Fisher rightly recognized the principle that “[t]he law recognizes not only that absolute precision in fixing damages may not be attainable, but also that it would be unjust to deprive a plaintiff of a remedy merely because of the absence of [the] means for precision.”
There were issues in three of the cases, however, as to the ownership of the vehicles. Because the question of ownership was one of the “critical facts” in the cases, Judge Fisher remanded those cases for further development of the ownership issue.
Finally, defendants had argued that plaintiffs’ expert testimony as to ” the diminution in value of the vehicles caused by the stigma of an accident history” was insufficient and amounted merely to a net opinion. Judge Fisher did not agree. Applying the abuse of discretion standard of review to the trial judge’s ruling that the testimony was admissible, Judge Fisher upheld that ruling. Defendants’ various attacks on the expert testimony went to the weight, not the admissibility, of that testimony, and defendants were free to argue them at trial.