Case Title: Bjorndal v. Weitman

Citation: 

Docket Number: S054837

State: oregon

Court: Oregon Supreme Court

Date: 2008-05-08T00:00:00Z

Document:
FILED: May 8, 2008
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OREGON
BRENDA BJORNDAL,
Petitioner on
Review,
v.
JAY WEITMAN,
Respondent on
Review.
(CC 031320; CA
A131325; SC S054837)
En Banc
On review from the Court of
Appeals.*
Argued and submitted
November 5, 2007.
Stephen P. Riedlinger, Susak
& Powell, P.C., Portland, argued the cause and filed the briefs for
petitioner on review.
Ralph C. Spooner, Spooner,
Much, & Ammann, P.C., Salem, argued the cause and filed the briefs for
respondent on review.  With him on the briefs were Melissa J. Ward, Salem, and
Tyler E. Staggs, Salem.
Meagan A. Flynn, Portland,
submitted a brief on behalf of amicus curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers
Association.
BALMER, J.
The decision of the Court of
Appeals is reversed.  The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the
case is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
*Appeal from Linn County
Circuit Court, Carol R. Bispham, Judge. 212 Or App 143, 157 P3d 261 (2007).
BALMER, J.
In this personal injury action
arising out of an automobile accident, we consider -- and, having done so,
reject -- the use of the so-called "emergency instruction" in such
cases.  The trial court gave that jury instruction at defendant's request and
over plaintiff's objection, and the jury returned a verdict in defendant's
favor.  Plaintiff appealed, arguing that the evidence did not establish an
"emergency" that would support giving the instruction.  Plaintiff
also argued that the emergency instruction is disfavored in Oregon and never
should be given.  The Court of Appeals affirmed in a brief per curiam decision,
relying on its prior cases.  Bjorndal v. Weitman, 212 Or App 143, 157
P3d 261 (2007).  We allowed review and now hold that the emergency instruction,
as used in ordinary vehicle negligence cases, is an inaccurate and confusing
supplement to the instructions on the law of negligence and, therefore, should
not be given.  For that reason, we reverse the rulings of the Court of Appeals
and the trial court and remand the case to the trial court for further
proceedings.
Plaintiff was driving east on Highway
22 in Linn County and looking for her father, whose car had broken down along
the highway.  Defendant had been following plaintiff for approximately 20
minutes, and there was no evidence that defendant was following too closely
during that time.  Plaintiff then spotted her father ahead on the right side of
the road.  Defendant testified that he had watched plaintiff's father, who was
waving his hands and gesturing, for two seconds and then, assuming "that
there was some sort of emergency situation, a hazard, or something that we
needed to be aware of and looked -- I did glance to my left and I scanned the
horizon [for about a second] to try and identify what this possible hazard or
emergency was."  Defendant testified that, when he returned his eyes to
the road ahead of him, he noticed that plaintiff, who was driving a van, had
rapidly decelerated or was in the process of decelerating.  He estimated that
plaintiff slowed from a speed of 50 miles per hour to 10 miles per hour within
one second.  Defendant testified that he then applied his brakes and, seeing
that there was no oncoming traffic, decided to steer to his left to pass
plaintiff on her left.  Plaintiff, however, had planned to turn left because
she had been told that there was a snowpark on the left side of the highway
where she could stop.  As she slowed to make the left turn, she signaled and
steered to the left.  Defendant testified that he did not see plaintiff's left
turn signal until after the van started to move to the left and at that point
he was unable to avoid colliding with plaintiff's van. 
Plaintiff brought this negligence
action against defendant, seeking damages for her injuries and medical expenses
arising out of the collision.  The case was tried to a jury.  Defendant
requested, and the trial court gave, the "emergency instruction" as
set forth in Oregon Uniform Civil Jury Instruction 20.08:
"People who are suddenly placed in a position of peril
through no negligence of their own, and who are compelled to act without
opportunity for reflection, are not negligent if they make a choice as a
reasonably careful person placed in such a position might make, even though
they do not make the wisest choice."
Plaintiff properly excepted to that instruction.  The jury
returned a special verdict in which it found that defendant had not been negligent
in the operation of his motor vehicle.  
Plaintiff appealed, arguing that the
trial court had erred in giving the emergency instruction.  Plaintiff first
asserted that the instruction was improper because the evidence established
that any "emergency" had been created by defendant.  Plaintiff's
second argument was that it always is error for a trial court to give an
emergency instruction because that instruction is an inaccurate statement of
negligence law and constitutes an improper comment on the evidence.  Bjorndal,
212 Or App at 144.  The Court of Appeals rejected the first argument.  As to
the second argument, the Court of Appeals indicated that plaintiff's assertion
that the emergency instruction never should be given was better addressed to
this court than to the Court of Appeals.  Id.  Plaintiff sought, and we
granted, review to consider that second question.
Plaintiff's argument, and that of amicus
curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers Association, can be summarized as follows: 
Uniform Civil Jury Instruction 20.08, which embodies the so-called
"emergency instruction," repeats the standard negligence instruction
and, hence, is unnecessary.  To the extent that the emergency instruction does
not merely reiterate the negligence instruction, it incorrectly suggests that,
in an emergency, some standard of conduct lower than the usual standard of
reasonable care applies.  Finally, the emergency instruction is an improper comment
on the evidence because it involves the trial court telling the jury how one
aspect of the evidence should bear on the jury's determination of negligence.
Plaintiff supports her argument with dicta
from this court's opinions that criticize the emergency instruction.  In Ballard
v. Rickabaugh Orchards, Inc., 259 Or 200, 207, 485 P2d 1080 (1971), for
example, this court stated that the emergency instruction "is unnecessary
to give and should be avoided * * *."  This court has also stated that 
"it would be a rare situation, indeed, where it would
be error to fail to give [the emergency instruction,] because the usual
instruction on negligence sufficiently covers what a reasonably prudent person
would do under all circumstances, including those of sudden emergency."
Evans v. General Telephone, 257 Or 460, 467, 479 P2d
747 (1971).  Because it rarely will be error not to give the instruction
and because the instruction is "unnecessary" and "should be
avoided," plaintiff urges us to eliminate the instruction altogether. (1)

Defendant responds that, despite this
court's dicta that the emergency instruction is rarely necessary, it
does not logically follow that giving the instruction always constitutes
reversible error.  Defendant argues that, in a "sudden emergency,"
which the jury could have found existed here, the instruction properly reminds
the jury that determining whether a person acted reasonably includes
consideration of all the circumstances in which the person was required to act,
including those that may have constituted the emergency.
We begin with a brief review of the
origins of the emergency instruction and then consider the parties' arguments
for eliminating or retaining the instruction.  We then examine whether it was
error to give the instruction in this case and, if it was, whether that error
requires reversal.
The reasons for the development of
the emergency instruction can be understood by examining several cases where
this court approved similar instructions.  In Marshall v. Olson, 102 Or
502, 202 P 736 (1922), the defendant in an automobile accident case had turned
to the left of the center of an intersection in violation of a city ordinance. 
The plaintiff argued at trial that the defendant's conduct was negligent, as a
matter of law, because the defendant had violated the ordinance, and the jury
awarded damages to the plaintiff.  This court reversed, holding that the trial
court had erred by, among other things, not giving an instruction requested by
the defendant to the effect that his conduct was not a violation of the
ordinance if he was "acting in an emergency" and "in order to
avert an accident."  102 Or at 512.  This court held that it was error not
to give the proposed instruction because, notwithstanding the rule that
violation of an ordinance was negligence per se, 
"it would be unreasonable to maintain that a man would
be culpably negligent under the circumstances, if he turned either to the right
or to the left to avoid imminent danger of collision, when the peril could be
escaped only by such action, and that, too, without injury to any one
else[.]"  
Id. at 512-13.  In other words, the instruction
mitigated the effect of the per se negligence rule that otherwise
required the jury to find the defendant negligent, even if he had acted with
reasonable care.
Another context in which the
emergency instruction often has been given is where a plaintiff had to act
quickly because of an emergency, and the defendant raised a defense of
contributory negligence.  Because, at common law, any negligence by the
plaintiff would bar recovery from a negligent defendant, courts used the
emergency instruction to remind the jury that the plaintiff's conduct had to be
viewed in light of the emergency circumstances that the defendant may have created. 
See Hatch v. Daniels, 96 Vt 89, 117 A 105, 108 (1922) ("When one,
without his own fault but through the negligence of another, is so situated, he
is not ordinarily, if ever, chargeable, as a matter of law, with contributory
negligence, if, in attempting to escape the danger, he makes a mistake in the
method adopted.").  In Durnford v. Worden, 242 Or 536, 410 P2d 1020
(1966), an automobile accident case, the jury returned a verdict for the
defendant, and the trial court granted the plaintiff's motion for a new trial,
concluding that it had erred in not giving an emergency instruction.  This
court agreed, because the instruction would have told the jurors that if they
found that "'either of the parties to this case was suddenly placed in a
position of peril, through no negligence of his own * * * he would not be
guilty of negligence even though he did not take the wisest action * *
*.'"  242 Or at 538 (quoting the instruction). (2)
  See Jeffrey
F. Ghent, Annotation, Modern Status of Sudden Emergency Doctrine, 10 ALR
5th 680, 689, 694 (1991) (mitigation of harsh effect of contributory negligence
one basis for emergency instruction); Caristo v. Sanzone, 96 NY2d 172,
750 NE2d 36 (2001) (same; but declining to abolish doctrine).
The cases just discussed suggest that
the emergency instruction originated as a means to allow the jury to avoid the
harsh result of finding that a defendant was negligent per se for
violating a statute or ordinance, as in Marshall, or that a plaintiff
was contributorily negligent and therefore barred from recovering damages
against a negligent defendant, as in Durnford.  In recent decades,
courts in some states have abolished the emergency instruction because the tort
doctrines that it was intended to ameliorate have themselves been changed.  See
Jeffrey F. Ghent, 10 ALR 5th 680 (collecting cases eliminating and retaining
emergency instruction).
Those doctrines have changed in Oregon as well.  As to the negligence per se rule, trial courts now instruct juries,
when appropriate, that that rule does not apply if "the defendant proves
by a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant was acting as a
reasonably careful person in the circumstances."  UCJI 20.03; see Barnum
v. Williams, 264 Or 71, 78-79, 504 P2d 122 (1972) ("[I]f a party is in
violation of a motor vehicle statute, such a party is negligent as a matter of
law unless such party introduces evidence from which the trier of fact could
find that the party was acting as a reasonably prudent person under the
circumstances.").  With respect to contributory negligence, the Oregon legislature
in 1971 eliminated the common-law doctrine that contributory negligence barred
a plaintiff from recovery and substituted a negligence rule that requires
comparison of the fault of the different parties.  ORS 31.600.  Thus, both
rationales described above for the emergency instruction have been superseded
by other changes to the law.  And, as we shall explain, we are satisfied that,
under the current principles of negligence law, concerns over the relative
negligence of plaintiffs and defendants safely may be left to general
negligence instructions. 
Even if the historical underpinnings
of the emergency instruction have now gone by the wayside, however, that does
not mean that the trial court necessarily committed reversible error -- or any
error at all -- in giving the instruction.  An instruction that is merely
repetitious of another instruction is not necessarily grounds for reversal.  See,
e.g., Searcy v. Bend Garage Co., 286 Or 11, 18, 592 P2d 558 (1979)
("The instruction was unnecessary and somewhat repetitious; however, so
instructing is not prejudicial error.").  As noted, however, plaintiff
argues that the emergency instruction not only is redundant, but also is an
incorrect statement of negligence law and an improper comment on the evidence. 
We turn to those issues.
Plaintiff first argues that the
emergency instruction misstates Oregon negligence law.  The trial court here,
before giving the emergency instruction quoted above, gave the standard
negligence instruction set out in Uniform Civil Jury Instruction 20.02:
"The law requires every person to use
reasonable care to avoid harming others. Reasonable care is the degree of care
and judgment used by reasonably careful people in the management of their own
affairs to avoid harming themselves or others.
"In deciding whether a party used
reasonable care, consider the dangers apparent or reasonably forseeable when
the events occurred.  Do not judge the party's conduct in light of subsequent events;
instead, consider what the party knew or should have known at the time.
"A person is negligent, therefore, when
that person does some act that a reasonably careful person would not do, or
fails to do something that a reasonably careful person would do under similar
circumstances."
Plaintiff asserts that the foregoing
general negligence instruction correctly states that a person is negligent if
the person fails to use reasonable care and that it then elaborates on some of
the considerations relevant to determining "reasonable care."  But
plaintiff points out that the emergency instruction, in contrast, tells the
jury that a person is "not negligent" if the person "make[s]
such a choice as a reasonably careful person placed in such a position might
make, even though [the person did] not make the wisest choice." 
(Emphases added.)  As we explain below, that instruction appears to modify the
general standard of care as described in the negligence instruction by making
negligence turn, in part, on whether a person makes one of many choices a
reasonably careful person "might" make, by introducing the concept of
"wisest choice," and by attempting to define the legal standard for
negligence in part by describing what is "not negligent."
A person is negligent if the person
fails to exercise reasonable care, a standard that "is measured by what a
reasonable person of ordinary prudence would, or would not, do in the same or
similar circumstances."  Woolston v. Wells, 297 Or 548, 557, 687
P2d 144 (1984).  See also Kirby v. Sonville, 286 Or 339, 345 n 1, 594
P2d 818 (1979) ("The standard of care is 'reasonable care' or that care
which persons of ordinary prudence exercise in all of their activities in order
to avoid injury to others (or themselves for that matter).").  The
emergency instruction, however, tells the jurors that, notwithstanding the
instruction that a person must exercise reasonable care, if there was an
emergency, they nevertheless may conclude that the person whose actions are at
issue was "not negligent" (emphasis added), even if the person
made a choice that is not the "wisest choice," as long as it was a
choice a "reasonably careful person" in those circumstances "might"
make.  Jurors would understandably view that instruction as permitting them to
find a defendant "not negligent," even when the defendant makes an
"unwise" choice.  To be sure, the reasonable care standard does not always
require a defendant to make the "wisest choice."  But neither
does it mean that a defendant was "not negligent" simply because the
defendant's "unwise choice" was made in the context of an emergency. 

Given the wide range of factual
settings in vehicle negligence cases, there certainly are circumstances in
which a reasonable jury could conclude that any choice other than the
"wisest choice" was not a reasonably prudent choice and
therefore was negligent.  The emergency instruction is erroneous because it
introduces into the liability determination additional concepts that are not
part of the ordinary negligence standard -- whether the person had a
"choice," whether the person made a "choice" that a
reasonable person "might" make, and whether the person made the
"wisest" choice or not.  The addition of those new,
otherwise-undefined concepts to the standard of reasonable care in light of all
the circumstances injects a likely source of juror confusion as to the legal
standard to be applied.  See Rogers v. Meridian Park Hospital, 307 Or
612, 616, 772 P2d 929 (1989) (rejecting use of a confusing jury instruction and
stating, "Instructions which mislead or confuse are ground for a reversal or
a new trial."  (Internal quotations, citation, and footnote omitted.)).
Parties may
of course introduce evidence, and may argue about, the "emergency"
nature of the circumstances in which the parties acted and whether or not
various "choices" of conduct, wise or not, were available.  The existence
of "emergency" circumstances in vehicle accident cases -- sudden
actions by other drivers, unexpected weather events, roadway hazards -- is
indisputably appropriate for a jury to consider in determining whether a person
has used reasonable care in attempting to avoid harming others.  See 3
Fowler V. Harper, Fleming James, Jr., and Oscar S. Gray, Harper, James and
Gray on Torts § 16.11 (3d ed 2007) (describing role of emergency
circumstances in determination of reasonable care).  But this court has never
articulated the legal standard of negligence as turning on those
considerations.  Rather, the negligence standard focuses on whether a person
acted with reasonable care to avoid harm to others, in light of all the
circumstances, including any "emergency."  Thus, the general
negligence standard embodied in Uniform Civil Jury Instruction 20.02
encompasses any legitimate concerns about "emergency" circumstances,
without introducing misleading concepts of the extent to which a
"choice" available to the person was "unwise,"
"wise," "wiser," or "wisest."  Moreover, the
negligence instruction already refers to facts that may create an emergency situation
when it speaks of the "dangers apparent or reasonably forseeable when the
events occurred" and the "circumstances" that are to be
considered in determining whether a person used reasonable care.  UCJI 20.02. (3) 
As we stated in Evans v. General Telephone, "the usual instruction
on negligence sufficiently covers what a reasonably prudent person would do
under all circumstances, including those of sudden emergency."  257 Or 460,
467, 479 P2d 747 (1971).
We therefore conclude that the
emergency instruction incorrectly stated the law and was likely to confuse the
jury as to the correct legal standard to apply.  When an instruction gives
"the jury the wrong legal rule to apply[,]" and thus permits the jury
to reach a legally incorrect result, this court consistently has held that the
error substantially affects a party's rights.  Wallach v. Allstate Ins. Co.,
344 Or 314, 322, 180 P3d 19 (2008).  That is the case here.  The erroneous jury
instruction substantially affected plaintiff's rights, and the judgment must be
reversed. (4)

To summarize:  the emergency
instruction, at least as used in vehicle accident cases, (5)
 misstates
the law of negligence by introducing an inquiry respecting whether a person has
made the "wisest choice," rather than focusing on whether the person
used reasonable care, given all the circumstances.  Because the instruction
misstates the law, it should not be given.  The trial court here erred in
giving the emergency instruction.  
The decision of the Court of Appeals
is reversed.  The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is
remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
1. In Lane v. Brown, 328 Or 42, 45, 970 P2d 206 (1998), this
court had allowed review of a Court of Appeals decision to consider the
"continuing validity" of the emergency instruction.  However, the
court concluded that the issue was not properly preserved and therefore did not
decide it.
2. Similarly, in one of the earliest emergency instruction cases, the
United States Supreme Court affirmed a jury verdict for a plaintiff who had
been injured in a stage coach accident caused by an intoxicated driver.  Stokes
v. Saltonstall, 38 US 181, 10 L Ed 115 (1839).  The Court approved a
variation of the emergency instruction that allowed the jury to excuse the
plaintiff's contributory negligence if the jury found that the plaintiff's
actions resulted from the plaintiff being placed in a position of "certain
peril" by defendant's conduct.  Id. at 193.
3. In citing the uniform negligence instruction, we do not mean to
suggest that that instruction is the best of all possible negligence
instructions.  A trial judge may craft a more specific instruction on
negligence that is appropriate in a particular case, as long as it accurately
states the law. 
4. Plaintiff
also argues that the emergency instruction given in this case was an improper
comment by the trial judge on the evidence, and, indeed, improperly foreclosed
an argument that was supported by the evidence, namely, that there was no
emergency.  Because we reverse the judgment on the ground that the emergency
instruction incorrectly stated the law, we do not consider plaintiff's
alternative argument that the instruction was an improper comment on the
evidence.
5. We
confine our ruling to vehicle negligence cases because that is the context of
this case.  In cases outside that context, trial courts should take into
account our comments here in deciding whether an emergency instruction is
justified.