Opinion ID: 2000504
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Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sudden emergency jury instruction.

Text: Todd first contends that the district court committed reversible error by refusing to give his requested sudden emergency jury instruction. Our review of trial court determinations concerning jury instructions is for correction of errors at law. Iowa R.App. P. 4; Sheets v. Ritt, Ritt & Ritt, Inc., 581 N.W.2d 602, 604 (Iowa 1998). As long as a requested instruction correctly states the law, has application to the case, and is not stated elsewhere in the instructions, the court must give the requested instruction. Vaughan v. Must, Inc., 542 N.W.2d 533, 539 (Iowa 1996). Parties are entitled to have their legal theories submitted to a jury if they are supported by the pleadings and substantial evidence in the record. Sonnek v. Warren, 522 N.W.2d 45, 47 (Iowa 1994). Evidence is substantial enough to support a requested instruction when a reasonable mind would accept it as adequate to reach a conclusion. Bride v. Heckart, 556 N.W.2d 449, 452 (Iowa 1996). Failure to give a requested jury instruction does not warrant reversal unless it results in prejudice to the party requesting the instruction. Vaughan, 542 N.W.2d at 539. A party's objections to the court's instructions must specify the matter objected to and on what grounds. Iowa R. Civ. P. 196; accord Boham v. City of Sioux City, 567 N.W.2d 431, 437 (Iowa 1997). Todd requested the court to give the following sudden emergency jury instruction: Todd claims that if you find that he violated the law in the operation of his vehicle, he had a legal excuse for doing so because he was confronted with a sudden emergency and, therefore, is not negligent. A sudden emergency is a combination of circumstances that calls for immediate action or a sudden or unexpected occasion for action. A driver of a vehicle who, through no fault of his own, is placed in a sudden emergency, is not chargeable with negligence if the driver exercises that degree of care which a reasonably careful person would have exercised under the same or similar circumstances. [3] The district court refused to give Todd's sudden emergency instruction to the jury. We have defined a sudden emergency as follows: (1) an unforeseen combination of circumstances which calls for immediate action; (2) a perplexing contingency or complication of circumstances; (3) a sudden or unexpected occasion for action, exigency, pressing necessity. Weiss v. Bal, 501 N.W.2d 478, 481 (Iowa 1993) (quoting Bangs v. Keifer, 174 N.W.2d 372, 374 (Iowa 1970)). Whether a party is faced with a sudden emergency is ordinarily a question for the jury. Id. at 481. We also view the evidence in the light most favorable to the party asserting that a sudden emergency existed. Id. Comparing this definition of a sudden emergency with the facts of this case, we conclude that the district court did not commit reversible error by refusing to give Todd's sudden emergency instruction. We first note that the weather was not a factor in causing the accident. According to the record, Comer, Beyer, and Todd were forced to quickly apply their brakes in response to a sudden stop in traffic. A sudden stop in traffic on a divided, four-lane highway, during a busy time of day, however, is not an uncommon or unforeseen event on the traveled roadways. We believe that the sudden stop in traffic which confronted Todd is more like the everyday hazard of driving through a school parking lot, see Weiss, 501 N.W.2d at 482 (district court erred by giving sudden emergency instruction; collision between pedestrian walking in high school parking lot and defendant's vehicle resulted from lack of control, excessive speed and not from an emergency independent of defendant driver's conduct), than like a deer bounding onto the road at night directly in front of a driver, see Mosell v. Estate of Marks, 526 N.W.2d 179, 182 (Iowa App.1994) (driver was confronted with an unforeseen, exigent combination of circumstances when deer bounded onto road at night directly in front of driver and driver was thus confronted with a sudden emergency; district court therefore erred by its failure to submit a sudden emergency instruction), or a couch falling from a pickup truck onto the freeway without warning. See Reener v. Hill & Williams Bros., Inc., 502 N.W.2d 26, 29 (Iowa App. 1993) (applying Tennessee law, substantial evidence existed to justify submitting a sudden emergency instruction to jury where traffic on freeway was moving steadily at highway speeds and it was impossible to change lanes quickly when couch fell from pickup onto freeway). Thus, while Todd was forced to take immediate action in response to the vehicles stopping in front of him, we believe such an event does not qualify as an emergency for purposes of submitting a sudden emergency jury instruction to the jury. See Myhaver v. Knutson, 189 Ariz. 286, 942 P.2d 445, 450 (1997) (sudden emergency jury instruction should be confined to cases where the emergency is not of the routine sort produced by the impending accident but arises from events the driver could not be expected to anticipate; trial court properly submitted sudden emergency instruction to jury where defendant driver swerved across center line into path of oncoming traffic to avoid head-on collision with vehicle that was coming toward him in wrong lane of traffic); see also Mitchell v. Johnson, 641 So.2d 238, 239 (Ala.1994) (sudden emergency doctrine was not applicable where defendant breached duty of having vehicle under control; defendant was traveling at a speed that, given the wet roads, did not allow her to stop upon seeing vehicle stopped at the crest of a hill); Tyson v. Brecher, 212 A.D.2d 851, 622 N.Y.S.2d 344, 345 (1995) (trial court properly denied plaintiff's request to give an emergency doctrine instruction to the jury; plaintiff, who was following defendant's vehicle on motorcycle when car in front of him came to an abrupt stop was merely faced with a routine traffic situation that he should have reasonably anticipated and been prepared to meet; plaintiff was required to maintain a reasonably safe distance and rate of speed to maintain control of motorcycle as he approached vehicle in front of him). [4] Additionally, we believe our statutes concerning a driver's duty to keep his or her vehicle under control, see Iowa Code section 321.288(3) (1995), and the duty to operate a vehicle such that it can be stopped within the assured clear distance ahead, see Iowa Code section 321.285, imply that a driver should be prepared for a sudden stop in traffic. Moreover, the sudden stop in traffic caused by a stalled vehicle would be no different from a stop in traffic caused by a vehicle making a left-hand turn across traffic. In either situation, a sudden stop in traffic should not be unexpected or unforeseen. To extend the sudden emergency doctrine to cases like the one before us, would, as we noted in Weiss, make it so that the doctrine could be relied upon in nearly any traffic context to excuse `emergencies' that a reasonably prudent driver must be prepared to meet. Weiss, 501 N.W.2d at 482 (citing William L. Prosser and W. Page Keeton, Prosser and Keeton on Torts § 33, at 197 (5th ed.1984)). We do not believe that excusing the failure to anticipate such ordinary hazards as abrupt stops in traffic is in keeping with the spirit or purpose of the doctrine. Id. We therefore conclude that the district court properly refused Todd's request that it submit a sudden emergency instruction to the jury. We affirm on this issue.