New trial ordered in boating death

Monday, March 24, 2003 | 9:23 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Supreme Court has ordered a new trial in a civil lawsuit over a pleasure boat accident at Lake Mead that killed one person and injured another by carbon monoxide poisoning.

The court said District Judge Nancy Saitta failed to give a proper instruction to the jury and that a new trial is warranted. In May 1993 Leo Gasse and Robin Lewis took a weekend cruise on Lake Mead in a used Sea Ray pleasure boat Gasse bought in 1991. They tied the boat at a beach and went to sleep in the cabin.

The next morning a friend found them. Gasse was dead and Lewis was "catastrophically injured," according to the Supreme Court. An investigation determined a gasoline generator powering the boat's air conditioner was the source of the carbon monoxide.

Lewis and Gasse's heirs sued Sea Ray Boats Inc., a Tennessee corporation. A District Court jury in Las Vegas returned a verdict in favor of Sea Ray.

Lewis and the Gasse's heirs appealed because at trial they had asked for an instruction that claimed there was not adequate notice given to the buyers about the dangers of the generator. But Saitta did not give jurors that instruction.

In product liability cases, the Supreme Court said, an instruction given to the jury must be specific.

The court, in its unanimous opinion Friday, held the jury instruction must say that warnings on products must "be designed to reasonably catch the consumer's attention" and that the language must be comprehensible and give a fair explanation of the risks in using the product. The warning also must "be of sufficient intensity justified by the magnitude of the risk," he said.

The case will return to the District Court in Las Vegas for a new trial.