$1.17 Million Judgment After Cap for Colorado Woman Electrocuted by Stove Sears Technician Miswired

In January 2019, Jacqueline Gebert of Colorado hired Sears to repair a faulty burner on her electric stove. The technician Sears sent to her home wired the stove incorrectly, and the mistake energized the metal parts of the cooking surface at the same voltage as a standard household outlet. An Arapahoe County jury later found that Sears' negligence injured her and awarded $2,700,000. After the statutory cap on noneconomic damages was applied, $1,168,010 stood, and the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed it in 2023.

After the repair, Gebert set a pan on the stove while washing dishes. With wet silverware in one hand, she reached with the other to lift the pan off the hot burner and was electrocuted. She testified that she felt the current enter her body, and her arm jerked so hard that she dropped the silverware. She went to the emergency room that day with leg pain and fatigue. The doctor ran tests and found no injury to her muscles, heart or internal organs. The next day she saw her primary care physician about tingling in her fingers.

Over the following months she saw a series of specialists for abnormal sensations, visual disturbances, ringing in the ears, anxiety, and problems with cognition and memory. At trial, her neurologist testified that, after ruling out other diagnoses, he diagnosed a mild traumatic brain injury caused by the electric shock. Her neuropsychologist diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and a mild neurocognitive disorder. A physical therapist described treating her for balance problems, then for neck, shoulder and hip pain and sensitivity to touch, light and sound, and she was diagnosed with a hypersensitive sympathetic nervous system. An optometrist testified that vision problems in her left eye improved significantly over seven months of treatment.

Liability was not in dispute at trial. Sears had denied that its technician wired the stove wrong until it amended its discovery responses about six weeks before trial, and the parties stipulated that the wiring was faulty. The contest was over causation and damages. Sears pressed the point that her neurologist himself had written of a general paucity of objective findings to support the diagnosis. Stephen J. Burg, Jessica L. Breuer and David J. Crough of Burg Simpson appeared for Gebert in the appeal.

After a five-day trial in Arapahoe County District Court, the jury found Gebert was injured because of Sears' negligence. It returned $2,000,000 for noneconomic damages and $700,000 for physical impairment. Judge Elizabeth Beebe Volz reduced the noneconomic portion to the $468,010 limit then in force under section 13-21-102.5(3)(a) of the Colorado Revised Statutes, leaving the $700,000 impairment award untouched, and denied Sears' motion for a new trial or remittitur.

Both sides appealed. Sears argued the jury should not have heard that it first denied negligence and later admitted it. The Court of Appeals agreed that the evidence was irrelevant but held the error harmless. Gebert argued that capping her noneconomic award violated the Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial. In a published opinion on November 9, 2023, the division rejected that challenge and affirmed the judgment in full.