Case Title: Stump v. Doe

Citation: 

Docket Number: 941052

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 1995-06-09T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  All the Justices 
 
CATHY A. STUMP, ADMINISTRATRIX, ETC. 
 
v.  Record No. 941052 
OPINION BY JUSTICE HENRY H. WHITING 
                                            June 9, 1995 
 
JOHN DOE 
 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF SALEM 
 
Roy B. Willett, Judge 
 
 
In this wrongful death case, we decide whether the evidence 
is sufficient to support a jury verdict for the plaintiff.  Even 
though the trial court set the verdict aside, we state the facts 
and reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom in the light most 
 favorable to the plaintiff, who prevailed before the jury.  
Griffett v. Ryan, 247 Va. 465, 467, 443 S.E.2d 149, 150 (1994).  
And "if there is any credible evidence in the record that 
supports the verdict, we must reinstate that verdict and enter 
judgment thereon."  Id.
 
While returning to Virginia from a trip to Alabama on 
September 28, 1986, Luther J. Garst, Jr., (Garst) was driving his 
Chevrolet Suburban, which was towing a 22-foot camping trailer, 
on Interstate Highway 81 (I-81) in Wythe County.  Five passengers 
were seated on the three tiers of seats of the Suburban, a large 
station wagon.  As a tractor-trailer overtook and passed Garst, 
he lost control of his vehicles and they overturned in the median 
strip, killing Garst's daughter, Jennifer Elaine Garst, a 
passenger in the Suburban. 
 
Since the driver of the tractor-trailer did not stop at the 
scene, his identity and that of the tractor-trailer's owner are 
unknown.  Cathy Ann Garst Stump, Jennifer's sister, qualified as 
 
 
 
 
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administratrix of Jennifer's estate and brought this wrongful 
death action against John Doe, the unknown defendant.  Process 
was served upon Virginia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, 
Garst's motor vehicle liability carrier, and it defended this 
action. 
 
Garst, a driver with over 20 years' experience in driving 
vehicles pulling horse trailers and campers, testified that just 
prior to the accident, he had been driving at a speed between 50 
to 55 miles per hour in the left lane of the two northbound lanes 
of I-81.  As Garst got to the bottom of a hill, he noticed a 
tractor-trailer "coming right fast" in the right lane, and "about 
the time that the tractor-trailer got to the rear of the camper, 
[he] felt the wind force pushing the camper." 
 
As Garst felt the wind force push the camper to its left, 
the front of the Suburban was also forced to its left.  This 
caused both vehicles to begin "swinging."  Garst unsuccessfully 
tried to stop the "swinging" by turning the Suburban slightly 
back to the right and applying both vehicles' brakes.  Then Garst 
applied the trailer brakes and accelerated the Suburban, but the 
more corrective action he took, "the worse everything got."  
Garst testified that "then, all of a sudden, everything went 
around, and that's the last thing I remember." 
 
Mark Douglas Reynolds, a passenger in the right middle seat 
of the Suburban, testified that as Garst was driving the Suburban 
at a speed of "around 50 miles an hour" at the bottom of the 
 
 
 
 
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hill, a tractor-trailer came by them at a speed of "about 70 
miles an hour," so close that "if I rolled the window down, I 
could have touched the trailer."  According to Reynolds, as the 
tractor-trailer was passing, the camper trailer "[i]mmediately" 
started to sway, and Garst "started to follow the sway of the 
camper to try to gain control, because we started at that point 
zig-zagging back and forth through the lanes." 
 
Describing the further movements of the vehicles, Reynolds 
testified that: 
 
 
The camper jackknifed.  When it jackknifed, it 
flipped us around in the road.  The camper broke loose 
from the Suburban.  And, at that point, we spun around 
in the road a few more times. . . . 
 
 
 
We then hit the median strip.  And, when we hit 
that, we started down the embankment straight.  But, 
then the camper flipped over on its side, and we rolled 
side to top to bottom to top and rolled all the way 
down going back up on the other side of the hill. 
 
 
Walter A. Johnson, who had made government-funded studies of 
the wind forces from tractor-trailers and their effects on other 
vehicles on the highway, qualified as an expert witness in the 
field of automobile and tractor-trailer aerodynamics.  Johnson 
testified about the effect of such wind forces upon a vehicle 
being passed by a tractor-trailer. 
 
According to Johnson, the front of a tractor-trailer pushes 
the air out of its way as it proceeds down the highway, creating 
a "bulging out of the wind [which] is referred to as a bow wave. 
 It is much the same as a bow wave of a boat going through the 
water."  At the aft, or rear end, of the tractor-trailer, the air 
 
 
 
 
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is sucked back in behind the vehicle.  As the bow wave progresses 
along the side of the overtaken vehicle, the wave's force pushes 
on those parts of the overtaken vehicle closest to that force, 
and as the rear end of the tractor-trailer passes the other 
vehicle, the force of the suction pulls on the parts of the 
overtaken vehicle closest to its force.  Johnson testified that 
the bow wave and suction forces grow disproportionately at higher 
speeds and closer proximities between the vehicles. 
 
The defendant moved to strike the plaintiff's evidence at 
the conclusion of her case.  When that motion was overruled, the 
defendant presented no evidence and renewed his motion, which was 
again overruled.  After instructions and argument, the jury 
returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff and the statutory 
beneficiaries in the total sum of $153,009.20.  On defendant's 
motion, the trial court set the verdict aside on the grounds that 
(1) the accident was not reasonably foreseeable by the defendant, 
and (2) the plaintiff had failed to prove that the defendant's 
negligence was a proximate cause of Garst's loss of control of 
his vehicles.  The plaintiff appeals. 
 
Noting Garst's testimony that during his trip to and from 
Alabama on interstate highways, he had been passed without 
incident at least 100 times by tractor-trailers which were 
traveling from 5 to 15 miles an hour faster than he was, the 
defendant argues that this was an "unfortunate freak accident."  
Hence, the defendant concludes that he could not reasonably 
 
 
 
 
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foresee that his operation of the tractor-trailer would cause 
Garst's vehicles to be "blown off the road."  We disagree. 
 
Contrary to the defendant's contention, the jury was not 
required to find that he should have foreseen that his operation 
of the tractor-trailer would cause the Garst vehicles to be 
"blown off the road."  Here, the evidence of the defendant's 
excessive speed and close proximity to the Garst vehicles, 
coupled with Johnson's testimony of the effect of the wind 
turbulence produced thereby, made it reasonably foreseeable that 
this turbulence might cause Garst to lose control of his 
vehicles.  And, in our opinion, the defendant need not have 
anticipated the precise consequence of Garst's loss of control.  
Hence, we think that the trial court erred in holding that the 
defendant could not have reasonably foreseen the consequences of 
his conduct. 
 
Next, we consider the defendant's claim that, as a matter of 
law, his negligence was not a proximate cause of Jennifer's 
death.  The defendant relies primarily upon this Court's decision 
in Colonial Motor Freight Line, Inc. v. Nance, 216 Va. 552, 557, 
221 S.E.2d 132, 135 (1976).  There, the plaintiff introduced 
evidence of the effect of the bow wave and suction forces of a 
large tractor-trailer upon overtaken vehicles similar to that in 
this case.  The plaintiff in Nance was driving a car towing a 
camping trailer and successfully claimed in the trial court that 
the defendant's tractor-trailer passing her at a high rate of 
 
 
 
 
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speed caused her to lose control of her vehicles and to overturn. 
 We reversed a judgment for the plaintiff, holding that she 
failed to establish a causal connection between the passing of 
the tractor-trailer and her loss of control, since she did not 
claim that she lost control while being passed by the defendant's 
tractor-trailer.  Rather, she testified that it was after the 
rear of the tractor-trailer was in front of her car that her 
trailer swerved.  Id. at 554-55, 221 S.E.2d at 134.  Here, in 
contrast, Garst and Reynolds testified that both vehicles were 
affected by the wind turbulence created by the defendant's 
tractor-trailer while it was passing them. 
 
In our opinion, this evidence, coupled with the other 
evidence, including Reynolds's testimony of the speed and 
proximity of the tractor-trailer, was sufficient to create a jury 
issue whether the defendant's conduct was a proximate cause of 
Garst's loss of control of the two vehicles.  Accordingly, the 
trial court erred in setting aside the verdict on this ground. 
 
Since our decision upon the above rulings of the trial court 
is dispositive, we do not consider the plaintiff's remaining 
assignments of error. 
 
In an assignment of cross-error, the defendant contends that 
the trial court should have set the verdict aside for the 
additional reason, viz., the following remarks in plaintiff's 
closing argument in support of a suggestion that the jury award 
$100,000 to each of the statutory beneficiaries: 
 
 
Several years ago a couple of whales got stuck in 
 
 
 
 
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the ice up in Alaska, and our government and the 
Russian government spent three million dollars to save 
two whales that were stuck in the ice. 
 
 
Upon the defendant's objection, the trial court correctly 
held that this was improper argument and told the jury to 
disregard it.  Since the court took prompt and appropriate action 
to remove the plaintiff's improper statement from jury 
consideration, we presume that the jury heeded the court's 
instruction.  Here, the defendant has failed to overcome that 
presumption.  Therefore, we reject this contention. 
 
Since we conclude that the factual issues were properly 
submitted to the jury, we will reverse the judgment of the court 
and enter final judgment for the plaintiff. 
 
Reversed and final judgment. 
CHIEF JUSTICE CARRICO, dissenting. 
 
I dissent because I think the outcome of this case should be 
controlled by this Court's earlier decision in Colonial Motor 
Freight Line, Inc. v. Nance, 216 Va. 552, 221 S.E.2d 132 (1976). 
 The majority attempts to distinguish Nance, but I see no 
principled difference between the two cases and, observing the 
rule of stare decisis, would hold here, as we held in Nance, that 
the plaintiff failed to prove causation.  Accordingly, I would 
affirm the judgment of the trial court.