Opinion ID: 902594
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: ¶1 Wendy Harris was injured when she sat on a display office chair at ShopKo Stores, Inc. (ShopKo), and the chair collapsed. She sued ShopKo for negligence. At the trial, evidence was introduced that she suffered from preexisting conditions that may have contributed to her injury. The trial court instructed the jury that, if it could, it should apportion damages between those attributable to ShopKo’s negligence and those attributable to her preexisting conditions. The jury found ShopKo negligent but HARRIS v. SHOPKO Opinion of the Court awarded Ms. Harris substantially less than she requested in damages. She appealed. ¶2 The court of appeals reversed the jury’s award and remanded for a new trial. It did so on the ground that the trial court had erred in giving the apportionment jury instruction. The court of appeals held that, because Ms. Harris’s preexisting conditions were asymptomatic on the date of the accident, ShopKo was not entitled to a jury instruction permitting the jury to allocate some portion of the damages to Ms. Harris’s preexisting conditions. We conclude that this approach is inconsistent with a core principle of tort law: defendants are liable only for those injuries proximately caused by their negligence. Under the court of appeals’ approach, where a plaintiff is experiencing no symptoms on the date of an accident, a defendant is liable for the full extent of the plaintiff’s injury, even though some portion of that injury may, in fact, have been caused by a preexisting condition. While we conclude the court of appeals erred in this regard, however, we nevertheless affirm that court’s grant of a new trial. We do so because at trial ShopKo did not present evidence sufficient for the jury to apportion damages on a nonarbitrary basis.