Case Title: Etherton v. Doe

Citation: 

Docket Number: 032104

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 2004-06-10T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  Hassell, C.J., Lacy, Keenan, Koontz, Lemons, and 
Agee, JJ., and Russell, S.J. 
 
GAIL K. ETHERTON 
             OPINION BY 
SENIOR JUSTICE CHARLES S. RUSSELL 
 
v.  Record No. 032104             June 10, 2004 
 
JOHN DOE 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF FAIRFAX COUNTY 
Gaylord L. Finch, Jr., Judge 
 
 
This appeal turns upon the sufficiency of the evidence to 
frame a jury issue with respect to assault and willful and 
wanton conduct in a non-contact automobile tort case.  Gail K. 
Etherton, the plaintiff below, and her daughter, Deborah 
Etherton, were the only witnesses who testified to the 
relevant events at trial, and the facts will be stated in 
accordance with their testimony. 
 
On February 1, 2001 at about 3:30 p.m., Gail Etherton was 
driving her car west on Route 29 in the City of Fairfax.  Her 
front-seat passenger was her daughter, Deborah.  Mrs. 
Etherton, intending to make a left turn on to Pickett Road, 
was in the left turn lane as she approached the intersection.  
Because the traffic light at the intersection had turned red, 
she came to a stop behind a white BMW sedan.  She could see 
that it was occupied by a male driver and a female passenger.  
When the light turned green, the white vehicle failed to 
proceed.  Drivers who were stopped in traffic behind the 
Etherton car began "honking" their horns.  The white sedan 
 
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"wouldn't move at all," and the driver behind the Etherton car 
"kept blowing the horn" until the white sedan finally turned 
left on to Pickett Road. 
 
There were two southbound lanes of travel on Pickett Road 
and the outside of each lane was bordered by a curb.  The 
white BMW occupied the right lane and Mrs. Etherton remained 
in the left lane.  As the two cars traveled side by side, the 
driver of the BMW "kept watching" and "staring" at Deborah.  
She testified:  "[H]e kept watching me . . . and Mom told me, 
Don't look at him.  But I noticed he kept staring at me the 
whole time he was trying to drive up the road."  The two cars 
came to a stop side by side at a red light at the intersection 
of Route 50, where Mrs. Etherton glanced over to see the 
driver of the white BMW.  She testified that he appeared to be 
a tall man of oriental descent with a woman passenger. 
 
After the light turned green, the two cars crossed Route 
50 and continued southbound.  Mrs. Etherton testified that the 
white BMW then crossed over into her lane:  "It veered over 
very quickly at my fender and then returned to the lane that 
it was in."  The driver of the BMW gave no signal or other 
warning before crossing into her lane and there was no 
apparent obstruction in his lane to require such a maneuver.  
She said:  "It scared me because I was afraid that he was 
going to hit the front of my car.  And I veered over to the 
 
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left to try to avoid him."  The BMW then returned to the right 
lane. 
 
A "very short time" later, the driver of the BMW repeated 
this maneuver, coming even further into the left land and 
forcing Mrs. Etherton to swerve "very close" to the curb.  The 
BMW again returned to the right lane and came to a stop at 
another traffic light.  Mrs. Etherton came to a stop in the 
left lane but remained behind the BMW because she was "really, 
really frightened."  She said that the maneuver "just happened 
so quick.  It was bizarre. . . . I didn't want to have any 
confrontation." 
 
After this light turned green, the BMW seemed to 
accelerate and Mrs. Etherton thought "that the whole incident 
was over.  And so I went ahead and started up the road, also.  
And he pulled in front of me very quickly without signaling or 
anything and just jerked his car in front of my car and 
slammed on the brakes as hard as he could.  And I knew I was 
going to hit him. . . . And I held on to the steering wheel so 
tight, and I almost stood . . . pushed down on the brake so 
hard.  You could smell the rubber from both cars, and the 
smoke was coming.  I hit the curb.  I wasn't going to hit him 
because I didn't want her [Deborah] to hit the windshield."  
Her car made no contact with the BMW.  The impact with the 
curb caused her to strike the steering wheel with her right 
 
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side.  That blow later resulted in an infected hematoma in the 
abdominal wall requiring surgery.  After the impact with the 
curb, the BMW returned to the right lane and drove away. 
 
Because the driver of the white BMW was never identified, 
Mrs. Etherton brought this action against "John Doe" in three 
counts:  Negligence, assault, and willful and wanton conduct 
justifying punitive damages.  At the jury trial, the court 
sustained defense motions to strike the plaintiff's evidence 
with respect to the assault count and the willful and wanton 
conduct count.  The case was submitted to the jury only on 
instructions covering ordinary negligence.  The jury returned 
a verdict for the defendant and judgment was entered on it.  
Mrs. Etherton assigned error to the trial court's action in 
striking the evidence and we awarded her an appeal. 
 
A motion to strike the plaintiff's evidence should be 
granted only when it plainly appears that the court would be 
compelled to set aside any verdict found for the plaintiff as 
being without evidence to support it, e.g., Green v. Smith, 
153 Va. 675, 679, 151 S.E.2d 282, 283 (1930), and it is 
axiomatic that any fact that can be proved by direct evidence 
may be proved by circumstantial evidence.  To establish the 
tort of assault, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant 
performed "an act intended to cause either harmful or 
offensive contact with another person or apprehension of such 
 
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contact, and that creates in the other person's mind a 
reasonable apprehension of an imminent battery."  Koffman v. 
Garnett, 265 Va. 12, 16-17, 574 S.E.2d 258, 261 (2003).  There 
is no requirement that the victim of such acts be physically 
touched. 
Here, the plaintiff's evidence was sufficient to warrant 
an inference by the jury that the "John Doe" driver was 
angered by the blowing of horns when he failed to proceed 
through a green light; that he considered the plaintiff the 
object of his anger; that his stare showed hostility toward 
her; and that he made repeated attempts, ultimately 
successful, to injure her or put her in fear of injury by 
either colliding with her or by running her off the road.  The 
plaintiff testified unequivocally that she was "really, really 
frightened."  The jury could have concluded from the evidence 
that the defendant's conduct was not merely negligent or 
reckless, but was instead conduct "intended to cause harmful 
contact or apprehension of such contact" and conduct that 
created in the plaintiff's mind "a reasonable apprehension of 
an imminent battery."  Therefore, the trial court erred in 
sustaining the motion to strike the plaintiff's evidence of 
assault. 
 
The plaintiff's evidence of willful and wanton conduct 
stands upon the same footing.  If accepted by the jury, that 
 
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evidence would have warranted a conclusion that the defendant 
caused injury to the plaintiff by deliberately swerving into 
her lane of travel and then suddenly applying his brakes, 
knowing that she would be forced into an emergency maneuver to 
avoid colliding with him.  The propensity for such an act to 
cause injury was self-evident but it was done without regard 
for the consequences. 
 
We held, in Booth v. Robertson, 236 Va. 269, 273, 374 
S.E.2d 1, 3 (1988), that punitive damages are warranted not 
only by malicious conduct, but also by "negligence which is so 
willful or wanton as to evince a conscious disregard of the 
rights of others."  In Griffin v. Shively, 227 Va. 317, 321, 
315 S.E.2d 210, 213 (1984), we said: 
Willful and wanton negligence is acting consciously 
in disregard of another person's rights or acting 
with reckless indifference to the consequences, with 
the defendant aware, from his knowledge of existing 
circumstances and conditions, that his conduct 
probably would cause injury to another. 
 
 
We added a commentary to these cases in Infant C. v. Boy 
Scouts of America, 239 Va. 572, 581-82, 391 S.E.2d 322, 327 
(1990): 
The hallmark of this species of tortious conduct is 
the defendant's consciousness of his act, his 
awareness of the dangers or probable consequences, 
and his reckless decision to proceed notwithstanding 
that awareness.  Because such consciousness and 
awareness are prerequisites, the use of the term 
"negligence," in defining the tort, is a misnomer, 
 
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to the extent that negligence is equated with 
inadvertent neglect of a duty. 
 
 
In Doe v. Isaacs, 265 Va. 531, 579 S.E.2d 174 (2003), we 
considered the sufficiency of the evidence to support a 
finding of willful and wanton conduct and an award of punitive 
damages in a case where the defendant, apparently intoxicated, 
drove into the rear of the plaintiff's car, came to the 
plaintiff's car and ascertained that injuries had resulted 
from the collision, and fled the scene.  After a review of our 
prior decisions, we concluded that the defendant's conduct, 
although grossly negligent, was not willful and wanton because 
there was no evidence to support a finding that, before the 
accident, he had the required "actual or constructive 
consciousness that injury will result from the act."  265 Va. 
at 538, 579 S.E.2d at 178.  In the present case, by contrast, 
there was evidence that would have supported such a finding. 
 
The appellee argues that the jury's finding against the 
plaintiff on the issue of negligence renders harmless any 
error in striking the evidence on the other two counts.  
Because the torts of negligence, assault, and willful and 
wanton conduct are conceptually distinct, as discussed above, 
we do not agree. 
 
Because the court erred in granting the motions to strike 
the evidence, we will reverse the judgment and remand the case 
 
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for trial on the issues of assault and willful and wanton 
conduct. 
Reversed and remanded.