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*********************************************** 
STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. LIN QI SI

(AC 39852)

DiPentima, C. J., and Sheldon and Harper, Js.

Syllabus

Convicted of the crime of negligent homicide with a commercial motor

vehicle in connection with an accident that occurred when the bus he

was driving struck and killed the decedent, a pedestrian crossing a road

at an intersection, the defendant appealed to this court. On appeal, he

claimed, inter alia, that the trial court erred by failing to instruct the

jury properly on the essential element of causation. Specifically, he

claimed that the jury charge was materially misleading because the jury

instructions on proximate causation could have led the jury to disregard

the conduct of the decedent entirely and, thus, to ignore the possibility

that she was the sole proximate cause of her own death. Held:

1. The defendant could not prevail on his claim that the trial court improperly

instructed the jury because it failed to instruct the jurors that it would

be a complete defense to the charge of negligent homicide with a commercial motor vehicle that the decedent’s negligence was the sole proximate cause of her own death: although the trial court did not provide the

jury with the requested instruction verbatim, it included the substance

of the requested charge in its instructions, which correctly charged the

jury that proximate cause is an essential element of negligent homicide

with a commercial motor vehicle that the state must prove beyond a

reasonable doubt and, thus, effectively instructed the jury that the state

must disprove the defense of sole proximate cause, as proof that the

defendant’s negligence proximately caused the decedent’s death is necessarily inconsistent with any claim that some other, concurrent cause

was the sole proximate cause of the death; moreover, the jury charge

was not materially misleading because, although certain portions of the

jury instructions misstated the applicable law with respect to the element

of proximate causation, namely, that it was the state’s obligation to

prove that it was not the negligence of the decedent that led directly

to her death, that instruction actually heightened the state’s burden of

proof to the benefit of the defendant so that no harm or injustice to the

defendant resulted, and there was no evidence in the record supporting

a finding that the instructions guided the jury to discount any fact or

set of facts inconsistent with the defendant’s guilt, as the evidence

presented did not establish that the decedent’s negligent conduct contributed so substantially and materially to her own death that the defendant could not have been a proximate cause of the death, and the jury’s

finding that the defendant’s negligence was a proximate cause of the

decedent’s death was supported by overwhelming evidence.

2. The trial court did not err when it provided the jury with a copy of the

jury charge during deliberations, as that was a permissible practice and

within the discretion of the court.

Argued April 16—officially released August 28, 2018

Procedural History

Information charging the defendant with the crime

of negligent homicide with a commercial motor vehicle,

brought to the Superior Court in the judicial district of

New London at Norwich, geographical area number

twenty-one, and tried to the jury before A. Hadden, J.;

verdict and judgment of guilty, from which the defendant appealed to this court. Affirmed.

John F. Geida, for the appellant (defendant).

Timothy J. Sugrue, assistant state’s attorney, with

whom, on the brief, were Michael L. Regan, state’s

attorney, and Thomas M. DeLillo, senior assistant
state’s attorney, for the appellee (state).
Opinion

SHELDON, J. The defendant, Lin Qi Si, appeals from

the judgment of conviction, rendered against him after

a jury trial, on the charge of negligent homicide with

a commercial motor vehicle in violation of General Statutes § 14-222a (b).1 The defendant was tried on that

charge under a long form information dated August 16,

2016, in which the state alleged that on December 5,

2012, he negligently operated a commercial motor vehicle at the intersection of Sandy Desert Road and Trading

Cove Road on the premises of the Mohegan Sun Casino

(casino) in Montville, and thereby caused the death of

the decedent, Pui Ying Tam Li. On appeal, the defendant

claims that the trial court erred by (1) failing to instruct

the jury properly on the essential element of causation

and (2) providing the jury with a copy of the jury charge

during deliberations.2 We affirm the judgment of the

trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following

facts. On December 5, 2012, the defendant was working

as a bus driver for the Travel Sun Bus Company. At

approximately 12:15 p.m. on that day, he departed from

Boston, Massachusetts with at least forty passengers

and traveled to the casino in Montville, Connecticut.

At or about 2:52 p.m., after dropping his passengers off

at the casino and driving out of the bus parking lot, he

stopped in the southbound lane of Trading Cove Road

at a traffic light controlling its intersection with Sandy

Desert Road. As Sandy Desert Road enters the intersection from the east, it has three westbound lanes and

one large eastbound lane. The intersection is situated

between the casino employee parking lot to the northwest and the Eagleview Employment Center to the

southeast, where shuttle buses transport employees to

and from the casino. While he was stopped at the light,

the defendant saw the decedent and her coworker, Tung

Lun Hom, cross Trading Cove Road in an easterly direction in the crosswalk directly in front of his bus. The

two continued walking to the sidewalk on the corner

to the defendant’s left, then turned right toward the

start of the southbound crosswalk across Sandy Desert

Road. Before entering the crosswalk, Hom looked at

the traffic light to his right, which controlled westbound

traffic stopped on Sandy Desert Road, and saw that it

was red. He did not look, however, at the signal on the

southeast corner of the intersection controlling pedestrian traffic on the crosswalk itself. When he did not

see any vehicles coming, he entered the crosswalk and

began to cross Sandy Desert Road with the decedent

close behind him.

Meanwhile, the defendant’s traffic light on Trading

Cove Road turned green. He looked left, right, and then

back at the traffic light before him, and began to make

a legal left turn into the eastbound lane of Sandy Desert

Road. At the same time, Hom and the decedent had
walked southbound in the crosswalk, almost all the

way across Sandy Desert Road, when Hom noticed the

bus suddenly approaching them from behind. He immediately ran but fell down, and thus did not see what

happened to the decedent. While making his turn, the

defendant hit the decedent with his bus; she later died

of ‘‘multiple blunt traumatic injuries.’’ The defendant

did not see the decedent until the moment the bus

struck her.

A second eyewitness, Charles Trolan, was stopped

at the traffic light at the same intersection on Sandy

Desert Road, facing westbound in the lane closest to

the center of the road. The decedent and Hom walked

in front of his car as they crossed Sandy Desert Road

in a southerly direction. Trolan saw the decedent fall

to the ground but did not see what happened to her

before she fell because he was looking past her, down

the street to his left, for a parking spot. Because the

decedent fell to Trolan’s left, he reasoned that she was

more than halfway across the street when the bus hit

her.

A surveillance camera at the Eagleview Employment

Center, on the southeast corner of the intersection,

captured part of the incident on video. Hom and the

decedent can be seen in the video crossing in front of

the defendant’s bus as it stood at the light on Trading

Cove Road just seconds before the impact. No vehicles,

other than the defendant’s bus, drove through the intersection after they began to cross Trading Cove Road.

A ‘‘brown patch’’ obscured part of the camera’s view,

so the video does not clearly show where they were

located in the roadway when the defendant’s bus began

to turn, nor does it show where they were when the

decedent was struck by the bus. Photographs of the

scene reveal that after the impact, the bus came to a

stop straddling the crosswalk in the eastbound lane of

Sandy Desert Road. The beginning of a skid mark just

behind the bus is also visible in the photographs.

Retired State Trooper James Foley, an expert in accident reconstruction, went to the scene at about 4:30

p.m. on the day of the accident to gather physical evidence, create a diagram of the scene, and ascertain

the timing sequence of the pedestrian crosswalk signal.

Based on the video, the location of the bus when it

stopped, and the skid mark, he opined that the decedent

was hit while she was in the crosswalk on the far side

of Sandy Desert Road from where she had begun to

cross it. The photographs also show the decedent’s

clothing, which had been cut away to facilitate emergency medical treatment at the place where she fell,

lying in the roadway in front and to the right of the bus

where it came to rest. Foley’s original diagram of the

scene was drawn to scale; however, the key on the

diagram that indicates distances was enlarged after the

diagram was created, so he could not be sure that using
the diagram to calculate distances would lead to accurate results.

State Trooper Jeffrey Rogers, the lead investigator

on the case, determined that the pedestrian crosswalk

signal controlling the crosswalk on the east side of the

intersection was either flashing red or solid red when

the decedent began to cross Sandy Desert Road at that

location; either signal would have indicated to a pedestrian in the decedent’s location that it was unsafe to

cross the road at that time and place. An inspection of

the bus revealed that it had no mechanical problems

that could have contributed to the accident. December

5, 2012, was a cold, clear day.

The trial court held a charging conference in chambers and later summarized the contents of the conference on the record. The court then noted that defense

counsel had requested that the jury be instructed that,

‘‘if the negligence of the decedent was the sole proximate cause, that that is, in fact, a defense . . . .’’ The

court went on to say, ‘‘I did, in fact, point out [that]

this sentence is a sentence that is in compliance with

the law and is contained within the segment of my

charge that describes the obligation of the state to prove

beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was the

proximate cause of the death. And I will, in fact, emphasize that by repeating that at the end of that paragraph.’’

In its charge, the court identified the four elements

of negligence and gave the following instructions on

the element of causation: ‘‘The third element is that the

defendant’s negligent operation of the motor vehicle

was the proximate cause of . . . the death . . . .

Proximate cause does not necessarily mean the last act

[of] cause, or the act in point of time nearest to the

death . . . . An act or omission to act is a proximate

cause of death when it substantially and materially contributes, in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by an efficient, intervening cause, to the death

. . . . When the result is a foreseeable and natural

result of the defendant’s conduct, the law considers

the chain of legal causation unbroken and holds the

defendant criminally responsible.’’

The court concluded its instructions on proximate

causation by saying: ‘‘Keep in mind that any negligence

on the part of the decedent . . . is irrelevant to your

determination of the defendant’s guilt or nonguilt of this

charge. [The decedent’s] reasonable or unreasonable

conduct does not relieve the defendant from his duty

to operate his motor vehicle in a careful and cautious

manner. Remember that it is the state’s obligation to

prove the element that it was the defendant’s negligent

operation of a motor vehicle which caused the death

of the decedent and not the negligence of the [decedent]

which led directly to the death.’’ The defendant challenges these last three sentences of the charge in this

appeal.
After concluding its deliberations, the jury returned

a verdict of guilty on the charge of negligent homicide

with a commercial motor vehicle. The defendant was

sentenced thereafter to six months’ incarceration, with

the execution of that sentence suspended, and two

years of probation. This appeal followed.

As an initial matter, we note that defense counsel

failed to submit a written request to charge on the

element of causation pursuant to Practice Book § 42-

16. ‘‘An appellate court shall not be bound to consider

error as to the giving of, or the failure to give, an instruction unless the matter is covered by a written request

to charge or exception has been taken by the party

appealing immediately after the charge is delivered.

Counsel taking the exception shall state distinctly the

matter objected to and the ground of exception.’’ Practice Book § 42-16. Even so, we conclude that counsel

adequately stated his objection on the record before

the jury charge and properly excepted to the charge

after it was given. Furthermore, the state has not argued

on appeal that the defendant failed to properly preserve

this claim. We will, therefore, address the merits of the

defendant’s claim of instructional error.

I

The defendant claims that the court improperly

instructed the jury because (1) it failed to instruct the

jurors that it would be a complete defense to the charge

of negligent homicide with a commercial motor vehicle

that the decedent’s negligence was the sole proximate

cause of her own death, and (2) the jury charge was

materially misleading with respect to the element of

proximate causation. We conclude that the substance

of the requested instruction was addressed in the

charge. We further conclude that, although certain portions of the instructions misstated the applicable law,

the charge as a whole actually heightened the state’s

burden of proof on the element of causation to the

benefit of the defendant. Therefore, any instructional

error was harmless.

‘‘We begin with the well established standard of

review governing claims of instructional impropriety.

[I]ndividual jury instructions should not be judged in

artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context

of the overall charge. . . . The pertinent test is whether

the charge, read in its entirety, fairly presents the case

to the jury in such a way that injustice is not done to

either party under the established rules of law. . . .

Thus, [t]he whole charge must be considered from the

standpoint of its effect on the [jurors] in guiding them

to the proper verdict . . . and not critically dissected

in a microscopic search for possible error. . . .

Accordingly, [i]n reviewing a constitutional challenge

to the trial court’s instruction, we must consider the jury

charge as a whole to determine whether it is reasonably
possible that the instruction misled the jury. . . . In

other words, we must consider whether the instructions

[as a whole] are sufficiently correct in law, adapted to

the issues and ample for the guidance of the jury.’’

(Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Hampton,

293 Conn. 435, 452–53, 988 A.2d 167 (2009).

‘‘A jury instruction that improperly omits an essential

element from the charge constitutes harmless error if

a reviewing court concludes beyond a reasonable doubt

that the omitted element was uncontested and supported by overwhelming evidence, such that the jury

verdict would have been the same absent the error.’’

(Emphasis omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.)

State v. Davis, 255 Conn. 782, 794, 772 A.2d 559 (2001).

‘‘[N]egligent homicide with a motor vehicle is a motor

vehicle violation and not an offense within the meaning

of General Statutes § 53a-24. We first note that the

degree of negligence prohibited by this statute is equivalent to the ordinary civil standard of negligence, namely,

the failure to use due care.’’ (Internal quotation marks

omitted.) State v. Kluttz, 9 Conn. App. 686, 694–95, 521

A.2d 178 (1987).

‘‘The essential elements of a cause of action in negligence are well established: duty; breach of that duty;

causation; and actual injury . . . .’’ (Internal quotation

marks omitted.) Giacalone v. Housing Authority, 306

Conn. 399, 418, 51 A.3d 352 (2012) (Zarella, J., concurring). In a criminal case, ‘‘the state must prove every

fact necessary to constitute the crime with which [the

defendant] is charged beyond a reasonable doubt.’’

(Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Salz, 226

Conn. 20, 28, 627 A.2d 862 (1993).

The first two elements of negligent homicide with a

commercial motor vehicle are that the defendant had

a duty to use due care in operating a commercial motor

vehicle and breached that duty. See Giacalone v. Housing Authority, supra, 306 Conn. 419 (Zarella, J., concurring). ‘‘The ultimate test of the existence of the duty to

use care is found in the foreseeability that harm may

result if it is not exercised. . . . [T]he test is, would the

ordinary [person] in the defendant’s position, knowing

what he knew or should have known, anticipate that

harm of the general nature of that suffered was likely

to result . . . .’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id.

‘‘A defendant’s duty and breach of duty is measured by

a reasonable care standard, which is the care [that] a

reasonably prudent person would use under the circumstances.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Kumah

v. Brown, 160 Conn. App. 798, 804, 126 A.3d 598, cert.

denied, 320 Conn. 908, 128 A.3d 953 (2015).

The state must next prove that the defendant’s breach

of his duty of care caused the decedent’s death. ‘‘[I]n

order for legal causation to exist in a criminal prosecution, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that the defendant was both the cause in fact, or actual

cause, as well as the proximate cause of the victim’s

[death].’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v.

Collins, 100 Conn. App. 833, 843, 919 A.2d 1087, cert.

denied, 284 Conn. 916, 931 A.2d 937 (2007). ‘‘Proximate

cause in the criminal law does not necessarily mean

the last act of cause, or the act in point of time nearest

to death. The concept of proximate cause incorporates

the notion that an accused may be charged with a criminal offense even though his acts were not the immediate

cause of death. An act or omission to act is the proximate cause of death when it substantially and materially

contributes, in a natural and continuous sequence,

unbroken by an efficient, intervening cause, to the

resulting death.’’3

(Internal quotation marks omitted.)

State v. Spates, 176 Conn. 227, 233–34, 405 A.2d 656

(1978), cert. denied, 440 U.S. 922, 99 S. Ct. 1248, 59 L.

Ed. 2d 475 (1979).

‘‘[A] jury instruction with respect to proximate cause

must contain, at a minimum, the following elements:

(1) an indication that the defendant’s conduct must

contribute substantially and materially, in a direct manner, to the victim’s injuries; and (2) an indication that

the defendant’s conduct cannot have been superseded

by an efficient, intervening cause that produced the

injuries.’’ State v. Leroy, 232 Conn. 1, 13, 653 A.2d

161 (1995).

‘‘[C]ontributory negligence is not a defense in a . . .

[prosecution for] negligent homicide [with a motor vehicle] . . . unless such negligence on the part of the

decedent is found to be the sole proximate cause of

[the] death.’’ State v. Scribner, 72 Conn. App. 736, 741,

805 A.2d 812 (2002). ‘‘If it is shown that the sole proximate cause of death is the decedent’s own negligence

rather than that of the defendant, there can be no conviction . . . . If, however, the defendant’s negligence

was the cause of the decedent’s death, the defendant

would be responsible under the statute whether or not

the decedent’s failure to use due care contributed to

his injuries, since contributory negligence is no defense

in such a case.’’ (Citation omitted.) State v. Pope, 6

Conn. Cir. Ct. 712, 714, 313 A.2d 84 (1972).

The complete defense of sole proximate cause to the

charge of negligent homicide with a commercial motor

vehicle is available only in circumstances where some

act or omission, other than the defendant’s negligence,

is shown to have been the only conduct that contributed

substantially and materially to the decedent’s death.

Proof that the decedent was the sole proximate cause

of her own death is necessarily inconsistent with the

proof required for conviction, that the defendant’s negligence was a proximate cause of the death. In the event

such a sole proximate cause is proved, the state will

have failed to prove an essential element of the charge

and the defendant must be found not guilty. Where, by
the same token, a defendant’s negligence is proved to

have been a proximate cause of the decedent’s death

notwithstanding the causative contribution of other

concurrent causes to that death, then proof of such

proximate causation necessarily disproves that any

other cause was the sole proximate cause of the death.

With these principles in mind, we turn to the charge as

given in the present case.

The defendant first claims that the court improperly

instructed the jury because it failed to give an instruction that it would be a complete defense to the charge

of negligent homicide with a commercial motor vehicle

that the decedent’s negligence was the sole proximate

cause of her own death. We conclude that the trial

court did not err because, although it did not give the

requested instruction verbatim, it included the substance of such a charge in its instruction. Before the

court gave the challenged instructions, it correctly

charged the jury that proximate cause is an essential

element of negligent homicide with a commercial motor

vehicle that the state must prove beyond a reasonable

doubt by including the required language for an adequate instruction on proximate causation from State

v. Leroy, supra, 232 Conn. 13. In doing so, the court

effectively instructed the jury that the state must disprove the defense of sole proximate cause because

proof that the defendant’s negligence proximately

caused the decedent’s death is necessarily inconsistent

with any claim that some other, concurrent cause was

the sole proximate cause of the death.

The defendant also claims that the jury charge was

misleading. Specifically, the defendant argues that the

instructions on proximate causation could have led the

jury to disregard the conduct of the decedent entirely

and, thus, to ignore the possibility that she was the sole

proximate cause of her own death. Although a portion

of the instructions misstated the applicable law, we

conclude that the instructions actually heightened the

state’s burden of proof to the benefit of the defendant

so that no injustice to the defendant resulted. We further

conclude that the charge as a whole did not lead the

jury to disregard any fact or set of facts that might

have been found to raise reasonable doubt as to the

defendant’s guilt.

The first challenged sentence at the end of the court’s

instructions on proximate causation was as follows:

‘‘Keep in mind that any negligence on the part of the

decedent . . . is irrelevant to your determination of

the defendant’s guilt or nonguilt of this charge.’’ This

instruction is correct if read literally; the defendant

is, in fact, legally responsible for his own negligence

regardless of whether the decedent’s conduct was also

negligent. The concern raised by this instruction, however, is that the jury might interpret the word ‘‘negligence’’ to mean conduct and, thus, might be led to
disregard facts suggesting that the decedent’s negligent

conduct was the sole proximate cause of her own death.

The conduct of the decedent is entirely relevant to the

defendant’s guilt in the sense that it is a critical part of

the circumstances surrounding the defendant’s alleged

negligence, which are obviously necessary for the jury

to consider in determining whether the state has proved

the essential elements of its case against him. If the

decedent’s negligent conduct contributed so substantially and materially to her own death as to reduce the

causative contribution of the defendant’s negligence to

the point that it was not substantial or material, then the

defendant could not be convicted of negligent homicide

with a commercial motor vehicle because his negligence could not be found to have been a proximate

cause of the decedent’s death.

The second challenged sentence in the causation

instructions reads as follows: ‘‘[The decedent’s] reasonable or unreasonable conduct does not relieve the

defendant from his duty to operate his motor vehicle

in a careful and cautious manner.’’ This instruction is

a correct statement of law. See Wagner v. Clark Equipment Co., 243 Conn. 168, 183, 700 A.2d 38 (1997).

The final challenged sentence in the causation

instructions reads as follows: ‘‘Remember that it is the

state’s obligation to prove the element that it was the

defendant’s negligent operation of a motor vehicle

which caused the death of the decedent and not the

negligence of the [decedent] which led directly to the

death.’’ If the court had instructed the jury that it was the

state’s obligation to prove that the defendant’s negligent

operation of a commercial motor vehicle proximately

caused the death of the decedent and stopped there,

its instruction would have been completely correct.

Instead, however, the court erred when it went on to

state that it was also the state’s obligation to prove that

it was ‘‘not the negligence of the [decedent] which led

directly to the death.’’

Although the court’s stated purpose in so instructing

the jury was to emphasize the complete defense of sole

proximate cause, this language overstated the state’s

burden of proof in two ways. First, the court’s instruction suggested that the state must prove that the defendant’s negligence was the only proximate cause of the

decedent’s death. Second, it suggested, more particularly, that the state must disprove that the decedent’s

negligence was a proximate cause of her own death.

Neither proposition is legally correct.

To begin with, it is well established that a cause can

be a proximate cause of a result or consequence even

if it is not the only cause of that result or consequence.

See Coburn v. Lenox Homes, Inc., 186 Conn. 370, 383,

441 A.2d 620 (1982). Each of several concurrent causes

of a death can thus be a proximate cause of the death if

it contributed substantially and materially to producing
that result. As long as a particular act of negligence by

a defendant is proved to have been a substantial factor

in causing a death by contributing materially to producing it, the state can meet its burden of proof as to

proximate causation without disproving that any other

cause was also a proximate cause of the death. See

Rawls v. Progressive Northern Ins. Co., 310 Conn. 768,

777, 83 A.3d 576 (2014). There is, moreover, no specific

rule requiring the state to disprove that the decedent’s

own negligence was a proximate cause of her own

death, for even if such negligence was a proximate

cause, that fact, as previously noted, would not affect

the defendant’s guilt unless such negligence was shown

to have been the sole proximate cause of the death.

Here, then, by requiring the state to disprove that the

decedent’s negligence was a proximate cause of her

own death, the court required the state to prove more

than the law required of it to establish the element of

causation. The state’s burden of proof was in no way

diminished by these instructions; instead, the charge

doubly enhanced the burden that the state had to meet

to establish proximate causation and, therefore, caused

the defendant no harm or resulting injustice.

Furthermore, we must observe that there is no evidence in the record supporting a finding that the instructions guided the jury to discount any fact or set of facts

inconsistent with the defendant’s guilt. The evidence

presented did not establish that the decedent’s negligent

conduct contributed so substantially and materially to

her own death that the defendant could not have been

a proximate cause of the death. There was, for example,

no evidence that the decedent darted into the street

from a place where she could not have been seen or her

actions could not have been anticipated by a reasonably

prudent bus driver exercising due care under the circumstances. Instead, overwhelming evidence was presented that the decedent was established in the

roadway, having walked in the crosswalk, in front of

at least three lanes of westbound traffic, while the

defendant was turning his bus in her direction. Two

eyewitnesses testified that she was more than halfway

across Sandy Desert Road when the bus struck her. An

expert opined that she was in the crosswalk at the time

of impact and was closer to her destination across the

roadway than to the point where she had entered the

crosswalk. Photographs of the scene supported his

opinion. There were, moreover, no external factors documented in the record, such as other vehicles, inclement

weather, or mechanical problems with the bus that

might have been found to negate the defendant’s negligence or to reduce its causative contribution to the

decedent’s death to the point that it was not a proximate

cause of the death. It was a clear day and the defendant’s

vision was unobstructed. The defendant admitted that

he looked at the light in front of him, not at the crosswalk to his left, as he began to make his fatal left turn.
The most persuasive fact in favor of the defendant’s

trial theory was the uncontested evidence that the decedent crossed the street against the pedestrian crosswalk

signal. However, this fact alone was not so powerful

as to reduce the defendant’s causative contribution to

the decedent’s death to the point that it was no longer

substantial or material. Even if the jury found that the

decedent crossed the street unlawfully, that would at

most have suggested that her negligence contributed

substantially and materially to, and thus proximately

caused her death, not that it was the sole proximate

cause of her death. The defendant failed to see the

decedent in the roadway with no evidence in the record

as to why, in the exercise of reasonable care, he could

not have done so in time to avoid striking her when he

made his turn. Therefore, we conclude that the jury’s

finding that the defendant’s negligence was a proximate

cause of the decedent’s death was supported by overwhelming evidence. For that reason as well, the court’s

instructional errors that increased the state’s burden

of proof as to causation had no prejudicial impact on

the jury’s verdict.

II

The defendant’s next claim on appeal is that the trial

court erred by providing the jury with a copy of the

jury charge during deliberations. We conclude that this

is a permissible practice and within the discretion of

the trial court. ‘‘[T]he practice of submitting written

instructions to the jury is permissible . . . .’’ State v.

Jennings, 216 Conn. 647, 665, 583 A.2d 915 (1990). Moreover, Practice Book § 42-23 (b) states in relevant part:

‘‘The judicial authority may, in its discretion, submit to

the jury . . . (2) [a] copy or tape recording of the judicial authority’s instructions to the jury . . . .’’ Therefore, we conclude that the court’s decision to provide

the jury with a copy of the jury charge during deliberations was within the discretion of the trial court, and

there was no error.

The judgment is affirmed.

In this opinion the other judges concurred.

1 General Statutes § 14-222a (b) provides: ‘‘Any person who, in consequence of the negligent operation of a commercial motor vehicle, causes

the death of another person shall be fined not more than two thousand five

hundred dollars or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.’’

2 The defendant also claims that a decedent’s contributory negligence

should be considered by the jury when the basis for the prosecution is

common-law negligence. We conclude that this claim was abandoned and

do not reach the claim on the merits. ‘‘The court shall not be bound to

consider a claim unless it was distinctly raised at the trial or arose subsequent

to the trial.’’ Practice Book § 60-5. ‘‘We are not required to review issues

that have been improperly presented to this court through an inadequate

brief . . . . Analysis, rather than mere abstract assertion, is required in

order to avoid abandoning an issue by failure to brief the issue properly.’’

(Internal quotation marks omitted.) State v. Fowler, 178 Conn. App. 332,

345, 175 A.3d 76 (2017), cert. denied, 327 Conn. 999, 176 A.3d 556 (2018).

In our review of the record, this court could find only one reference to

contributory negligence by defense counsel, as he noted, ‘‘that’s an issue

for another day.’’ In his brief, the defendant’s argument on the issue is two
paragraphs long with no references to the law or facts in the record. Because

defense counsel did not request that the trial court give an instruction on

contributory negligence, did not take exception to the lack of such instruction and did not brief the issue beyond a bare assertion, we conclude that

he has abandoned this claim.

3 A useful, alternative way of characterizing conduct that is an actual

cause of the result but is not a proximate cause, is to say that the conduct

has been reduced to the point of triviality or inconsequence. ‘‘Remote or

trivial [actual] causes are generally rejected because the determination of

the responsibility for another’s injury is much too important to be distracted

by explorations for obscure consequences or inconsequential causes.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Doe v. Manheimer, 212 Conn. 748, 758, 563

A.2d 699 (1989), overruled in part on other grounds by Stewart v. Federated

Dept. Stores, Inc., 234 Conn. 597, 608, 662 A.2d 753 (1995).