Opinion ID: 1320200
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The Last Clear Chance Instruction

Text: Appellants requested a last clear chance instruction, informing the jury that if they determined that the decedent had, by his own negligence, placed himself in a position of danger, from which he was unable to escape or of which he was unaware, and thereafter defendants either saw or should have seen the danger and could have avoided injury to the decedent by the exercise of ordinary care, but failed to do so, then you must find against the defense of comparative negligence, because under such conditions the law holds the defendants liable for any injury or damage suffered by the plaintiff's decedent and proximately resulting from the accident, despite the negligence of the plaintiff's decedent. The trial court properly refused to give the instruction, on the ground that it was inappropriate under Nevada's comparative negligence statute. The traditional legal rationale for the application of the doctrine of last clear chance was that the plaintiff had ceased to be actively negligent, and the subsequent negligence of the defendant was therefore, as a matter of law, the sole proximate cause of the injury. See Weck v. Reno Traction Co., 38 Nev. 285, 296-97, 149 P. 65, 68 (1915). This rationale has been criticized as quite out of line with modern ideas of proximate cause. W. Prosser, supra § 66, at 427. Indeed, it is not consistent with the rationale applied by this court in other consecutive negligence situations. See, e.g., Drummond v. Mid-West Growers, 91 Nev. 698, 704-5, 542 P.2d 198, 203 (1975) (subsequent negligence of a third party toward rescuer of negligent defendant foreseeable; defendant's negligence remains proximate cause). Most courts which have considered the issue in recent years have agreed, concluding that the doctrine, as a device for assigning sole responsibility for an injury to the defendant, though both defendant and plaintiff are negligent, should not survive under a system of comparative negligence. E.g., Kaatz v. State, 540 P.2d 1037 (Alaska 1975); Li v. Yellow Cab Company, supra ; Burns v. Ottati, 513 P.2d 469 (Colo. App. 1973); Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Co. v. Daugherty, 118 Ga. App. 518, 164 S.E.2d 269 (1968); Cushman v. Perkins, 245 A.2d 846 (Me. 1968). We agree. The trial court committed no error in refusing to give the last clear chance instruction as requested by appellants.