Opinion ID: 1347493
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Defendants also assign as error the trial court's failure to submit their requested instruction on intervening cause.

Text: This proposal, clearly slanted in favor of defendants, is repetitious and not properly balanced. The basic element which it contains is that negligence, if any, on the part of Mariann Sue McCalla, would not be a proximate cause of the death of plaintiff's decedent if it had causatively resulted from the intervening act of Floyd Raymond Peterman, which totally ignores the fact there may be concurrent negligence. On the subject of requested instructions this court said in Kinyon v. Chicago & N. W. Ry. Co., 118 Iowa 349, 361, 92 N.W. 40: As a rule, instructions offered by counsel are not so framed that the court is justified in giving them literally as asked, but, if the main thought sought to be expressed contains a pertinent legal principle which is not already fully covered by other instructions given, the court should embody it in proper words in its own charge. We have consistently adhered to this principle. See Lehman v. Iowa State Highway Commission, 251 Iowa 77, 85, 99 N. W.2d 404, and Law v. Hemmingsen, 249 Iowa 820, 825-826, 89 N.W.2d 386. When confronted with a problem such as that here presented we of course look to all relevant instructions, not to any one standing alone. And, if the substance of a requested instruction is covered in the instructions given, it is not error to refuse the request made. See Shank v. Wilhite, 256 Iowa 982, 985, 129 N.W.2d 662, and Brady v. McQuown, 241 Iowa 34, 39-40, 40 N.W.2d 25. This principle was in fact adopted in the giving of instruction 26. See Uniform Jury Instruction 1.4. In the case now before us the trial court, by instructions 8, 9, 10, 21 and 21½, defined proximate cause, concurrent negligence, and intervening proximate cause, then told the jury plaintiff could not recover from defendants unless he showed by evidence the negligence of Mariann Sue McCalla was a proximate cause of the death, and if the conduct of Peterman was found to be an intervening proximate cause the law then refers the damage done to the last act, refusing to trace back to that which is more remote. In this regard see Dennis v. Merrill, 218 Iowa 1259, 1261-1263, 257 N.W. 322, and Godbey v. Grinnell Electric & Heating Co., 190 Iowa 1068, 1078, 181 N.W. 498. While instructions 21 and 21½ might well have been better and more clearly phrased, they were in fact more favorable to defendants than to plaintiff. The substance of the instruction proposed by defendants was embodied in those given. Under these circumstances we fail to find prejudicial error in the failure to give defendants' requested instruction on intervening cause.