Task: songer_direct1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Your task is to determine the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision, coded as "liberal" or "conservative". Consider liberal to be for government tax claim; for person claiming patent or copyright infringement; for the plaintiff alleging the injury; for economic underdog if one party is clearly an underdog in comparison to the other, neither party is clearly an economic underdog; in cases pitting an individual against a business, the individual is presumed to be the economic underdog unless there is a clear indication in the opinion to the contrary; for debtor or bankrupt; for government or private party raising claim of violation of antitrust laws, or party opposing merger; for the economic underdog in private conflict over securities; for individual claiming a benefit from government; for government in disputes over government contracts and government seizure of property; for government regulation in government regulation of business; for greater protection of the environment or greater consumer protection (even if anti-government); for the injured party in admiralty - personal injury; for economic underdog in admiralty and miscellaneous economic cases. Consider the directionality to be "mixed" if the directionality of the decision was intermediate to the extremes defined above or if the decision was mixed (e.g., the conviction of defendant in a criminal trial was affirmed on one count but reversed on a second count or if the conviction was afirmed but the sentence was reduced). Consider "not ascertained" if the directionality could not be determined or if the outcome could not be classified according to any conventional outcome standards.

PER CURIAM:
A judgment rendered for appellees by the district judge, sitting without a jury in a diversity ease, arising out of a collision between two vehicles both traveling south on the Richmond-Petersburg Turnpike, serves as a basis for this appeal. A vehicle operated by appellee Fihelly at approximately 55 miles per hour in the extreme right hand lane of the three lane south bound portion of the Turnpike collided with a vehicle operated by appellant in a lane or between lanes to the left and front of Fihelly’s vehicle when appellant’s car veered to the right as Fihelly’s vehicle was about to overtake it.
On conflicting evidence, the district judge found appellant negligent and appellant’s negligence a proximate cause of the accident. The district judge did not make a definite ruling upon the question of Fihelly’s negligence raised by appellant’s defense of contributory negligence because that question involved a construction of state law on which the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia had not spoken; but, again on conflicting evidence, the district judge found that the asserted negligence on the part of Fihelly was not an efficiently contributing cause of the accident.
We have examined the evidence relevant to the issue of whether any negligence on the part of Fihelly caused or contributed to the happening of the accident and we cannot say that the finding of the district judge was clearly erroneous, Rule 52, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; Johnson, Administratrix v. United States, 336 F.2d 801 (4 Cir. 1964); United States v. Still, 120 F.2d 876 (4 Cir. 1941), cert. den., 314 U.S. 671, 62 S.Ct. 135, 86 L.Ed. 537 (1941). Therefore, the judgment of the lower court is
Affirmed.

Question: What is the ideological directionality of the court of appeals decision?
A. conservative
B. liberal
C. mixed
D. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: B