Defries
Defries v. Yamaha Motor Corporation, U.S.A.
Opinion
Opinion
I. BACKGROUND
Defries’s wife purchased a dirt bike in December 2016 as a Christmas present for
her husband. Defries first rode the bike a month later.
On February 12, 2017, Defries rode the dirt bike again. He met with his friends
Johnny Butcher and Johnny Kitchin at a dirt course in Perris.
Defries rode for about 15 or 20 minutes and was going through the whoops, or
small hills, portion of the course. As he testified at trial: “I was coming through [the
whoops] kind of in a crouched position, sitting up over the bike. As I’m going the bike is
rocking back and forth. And then at one moment the throttle just kind of slipped off and
the handlebars came into me and I went down. It was quick. It just happened like that.”
Butcher testified at trial that “[j]ust shortly after [Defries] entered the whoops,
maybe the second or third one in, his handlebars went to the left and then he just
tumbled.” Both Butcher and Kitchin observed that the throttle was hanging off to the
side and not attached to the bike when they loaded the bike back onto Defries’s truck
after the accident.
Defries fractured his right femur and separated his shoulder. He possibly suffered
a hernia from…