A state appellate court decision filed this week has stalled a $3.9 million civil award to the family of a Winchester man who died in a 2002 motorcycle crash near Temecula.

In July 2003, the family of Elza Scott Keener, 47, filed a wrongful death suit against a San Jacinto man and a company for whom the man worked. Nearly two years later, in May 2005, a civil jury in San Diego County found in favor of the Keener family.

The jury found that the driver of a Penske rental truck, Hector Correa Solis, was 80 percent at fault for the crash on Winchester Road at Willows Avenue, according to court documents. Jurors found Keener to be 20 percent at fault.

At the time of the crash, Solis was driving for his employer, Jeld-Wen Inc., a window and door company. Attorneys for Jeld-Wen and Solis appealed the civil jury's decision and monetary award on several fronts.

Attorneys on both sides in the civil case did not return calls for comment.

The 4th District Court of Appeal in San Diego, in an opinion filed Wednesday, concluded that there were errors in the way verdicts were received on the last of nine special verdicts in the three-week trial.

However, the justices did not find that the entire case has to be retried.

"At this point, we are satisfied that it would be an unacceptable waste of judicial resources to go back to square one, where there are eight special verdicts that were adequately resolved," they wrote in the opinion.

The justices placed blame across the board.

"Here, the jury foreperson, the trial court, and both counsel all must bear some part of the responsibility in allowing this unfortunate series of events," the opinion states.

The remedy ordered by the justices is to reverse the judgment in part, allowing the other eight verdicts to stand and allowing new proceedings pertaining only to the percentage of liability on the ninth special verdict.

The jury verdict of 80/20 fault belonging to Solis came into question two days after it was recorded, when the court "somehow became aware" that two of the special verdict questions for one of the jurors had been omitted, according to the appellate court opinion.

The justices wrote that the rendering of verdicts was "a proceeding that was so confusing that no one, including the court and counsel, noticed that one juror was not questioned about an essential matter, nor that the foreperson had orally answered that he disagreed with the written verdict that he had just presented."

No information was available about when or whether a new civil trial on the wrongful death lawsuit would begin.

When the fatal crash happened on July 19, 2002, Solis was driving a large, yellow Penske rental truck that authorities say pulled onto Winchester Road from Willows Avenue, near Murrieta Hot Springs Road. Keener was riding a motorcycle on Winchester Road and couldn't stop before slamming into the truck. He died at the scene.

At the time of the fatal crash, there was no traffic signal at the intersection, but one has since been installed.

In June 2005, a criminal court jury convicted Solis of vehicular manslaughter without gross negligence, which is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in county jail.

Several months later, a Southwest Justice Center judge sentenced Solis to three years' probation and 250 hours of community service.

Contact staff writer John Hall at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2628, or jhall@californian.com.