Opinion ID: 1926975
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Plaintiff's Failure to Wear a Safety Belt

Text: We next address defendant's argument that the trial court erred in excluding evidence of plaintiff's failure to wear a safety belt. Defendant asserts that (1) plaintiff's failure to wear a safety belt was the proximate cause of his injuries, and (2) plaintiff's failure to wear a safety belt was admissible to establish his comparative fault. Title 23 V.S.A. § 1259(a) imposes a fine on the operator of a motor vehicle if any person is occupying a seat that has a federally approved safety belt system and is not restrained by the safety belt while the vehicle is in motion on a public highway. The statute also contains evidentiary components that provide: (d) Noncompliance with the provisions of this section shall not be admissible as evidence in any civil proceeding. (e) Failure to wear a safety belt in violation of this section shall not constitute negligence or contributory negligence in any civil proceeding or criminal action, nor be entered as evidence to bar prosecution of a criminal offense. Id. § 1259(d), (e). When questioned at oral argument regarding the statute's applicability, defense counsel argued that, because the statute was not effective until January 1, 1994, it did not apply. The statute became effective approximately five months after the complaint was filed, but more than three years before the case went to trial. Although new statutes generally do not apply to cases that are pending at the time of their effective date, there is an exception for statutes that are solely procedural or are remedial in nature. See Myott v. Myott, 149 Vt. 573, 575, 547 A.2d 1336, 1338 (1988). The question of the applicability of a new statute to pending litigation is determined largely by 1 V.S.A. §§ 213 and 214(b). See id. at 575-76, 547 A.2d at 1338. Section 213 provides: Acts of the general assembly, except acts regulating practice in court, relating to the competency of witnesses or to amendments of process or pleading, shall not affect a suit begun or pending at the time of their passage. 1 V.S.A. § 213 (emphasis added). The subsections of the safety belt statute at issue prohibit the admissibility of a particular type of evidence, thereby regulating practice in court. Because the provisions within § 1259 that are at issue in this case are procedural rather than substantive, they fall within § 213's exception and apply to the instant case. Defendant argues that the statute only prohibits references to the fact that the safety belt statute has been violated. Section 1259(d), however, prohibits the introduction of evidence of noncompliance with the safety belt statute in a civil proceeding. Failure to wear a safety belt is the most obvious example of noncompliance with the statute, and we presume the Legislature chose the word noncompliance advisedly. See Payea v. Howard Bank, 164 Vt. 106, 107, 663 A.2d 937, 938 (1995) (When construing a statute, we presume that language is inserted advisedly.). Ford contends that even if the statute can be read as prohibiting the introduction of the plaintiff's failure to wear a safety belt on the issue of comparative fault, the failure to wear a safety belt is admissible on defendant's theory that it was the sole proximate cause of plaintiff's injury. We construe 23 V.S.A. § 1259(d), however, as prohibiting the introduction of evidence of a failure to wear a safety belt in a civil proceeding irrespective of the legal theory advanced by a party. Thus, the court did not err in excluding this evidence.