Opinion ID: 2518603
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Jury Instruction Claim

Text: Dilbeck argues that the jury used an incorrect standard of negligence in finding that he acted negligently and was partly liable for Pagenkopf's injuries. Specifically, Dilbeck points to Jury Instruction 22, which referred to an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regulation directing that [l]adders shall not be placed in front of doors opening toward the ladder unless the door is blocked upon, locked or guarded. [49] Dilbeck asserts that the language of Instruction 22 referring to this directive erroneously suggested that if Dilbeck failed to comply with the OSHA regulation, his noncompliance would amount to negligence per se. [50] Jury Instruction 22 stated: There is a workplace safety law of the State of Alaska which provides that: Ladders shall not be placed in front of doors opening toward the ladder unless the door is blocked upon, locked or guarded. Chatham Electric, Inc. claims that the owner, Hugh Dilbeck, violated this law. If you decide that it is more likely true than not true that Hugh Dilbeck violated any part of this law and that the violation was a legal cause of the accident, then you may find Hugh Dilbeck negligent. If you decide it is more likely true than not true that Hugh Dilbeck obeyed this law, you may still find Hugh Dilbeck negligent if you decide that a reasonable person under circumstances similar to those shown by the evidence would have taken precautions in addition to those required by the statute. Instructions on the verdict form will tell you what to do if you decide that Hugh Dilbeck was negligent. Dilbeck acknowledges that he did not comply with the OSHA regulation. But he claims that because Pagenkopf was a volunteer and not a shop employee when the accident occurred, the regulation did not apply to Dilbeck's conduct. He argues that by referring to the regulation and suggesting that it applied to him, Instruction 22 unfairly condemned him to being found negligent per se for violating an OSHA requirement that he had no legal duty to obey. Dilbeck also faults the instruction for including language telling the jury how to proceed if it found that Dilbeck had complied with the OSHA requirement. According to Dilbeck, the court mistakenly drew this language from a pattern-jury instruction dealing with the defense of compliance. Dilbeck insists that this instruction is meant to be given only in negligence per se cases where the defense of compliance is actually raised. Dilbeck emphasizes that he never asserted a defense based on compliance  he simply took the position that the OSHA regulation did not apply. Given these circumstances, Dilbeck reasons that the instruction virtually directed a verdict against him by suggesting that he had claimed compliance and was required to prove his defense. In Dilbeck's view, the instruction held him to an impossibly high standard that would have allowed the jury to absolve him of negligence only if it found [c]ompliance with the statute and more. In our view, Dilbeck misreads Instruction 22. To explain this conclusion, we begin with a brief review of our case law on negligence per se. We have recognized that the violation of a regulation or statute amounts to negligence as a matter of law  that is, negligence per se  when the statute or regulation at issue defines a standard of conduct that a reasonable person is expected to follow under the circumstances presented. [51] For purposes of determining whether a particular law sets a standard that justifies applying negligence per se, we have adopted the four criteria set out in section 286 of the Restatement (Second) of Torts. [52] When these criteria are met, the court instructs the jury on negligence per se, informing jurors that if they find a violation, they must find the defendant negligent. [53] But we have also recognized that trial courts have discretion to treat the requirements of a law as relevant evidence of negligence even if the law fails to meet the Restatement's criteria for applying negligence per se. [54] In such cases, we have held, if the trial court deems a provision of law relevant to the standard-of-care inquiry, the court is authorized to permit the introduction of testimony showing violation as evidence of negligence and to instruct the jury that it may consider a violation of the law to be evidence of negligence. [55] The Alaska Civil Pattern Jury Instructions reflect this distinction between a regulation's use to establish negligence per se and its use as mere evidence to help the jury decide how to assess the conduct at issue under the general standard of reasonable care. Pattern Instruction 03.04A addresses the stringent requirement of negligence per se; [56] Pattern Instruction 03.04B deals with the more lenient evidence-of-negligence concept; [57] and Pattern Instruction 03.04C informs the jury how to proceed if it finds that the defendant has complied with a law that applies to the case. [58] As can be seen, Instruction 22, the instruction disputed here, does not use the language of Pattern Instruction 03.04A, Alaska's pattern instruction on negligence per se. Instead, by stating that if the jury found that Dilbeck had violated the OSHA regulation, then you may find Hugh Dilbeck negligent, Instruction 22 mirrored the language of Pattern Instruction 03.04B  the instruction dealing with use of a law as evidence of negligence. As the superior court aptly noted in response to Dilbeck's objection to the instruction at trial, I did not say that you shall find Hugh Dilbeck negligent, but that you may. I think that gives you the opportunity to argue. Dilbeck does correctly observe that Instruction 22 also incorporates language from Pattern Jury Instruction 03.04C, which tells the jury how to proceed when a defendant claims to have complied with a law that applies to the case. Yet Dilbeck mistakenly suggests that Pattern Instruction 03.04C is limited to cases involving negligence per se. By its express terms, Pattern Instruction 03.04C covers all situations in which [t]here is a law . . . that applies to this case and an issue of compliance might be raised. [59] Nothing in the instruction's title or wording confines its use to cases involving compliance with a law that applies under the doctrine of negligence per se; and nothing in the instruction implies that it may not also be used in cases involving laws that apply under the more flexible evidence-of-negligence theory. Nor do we read either Pattern Instruction 03.04C or Instruction 22 as given here to imply that a defense of compliance has actually been raised. Similarly, we do not read these instructions as suggesting that the defendant must bear the burden of proving compliance and must rule out other grounds for finding negligence as well. In our view, a reasonable juror reading Instruction 22 in a commonsense manner would understand it to say only that if the defendant claims compliance with an applicable law and the evidence establishes that claim, the jury is not precluded from finding negligence on other grounds when the evidence supports such a finding. While this aspect of Instruction 22 may have been superfluous  and arguably should have been omitted  because Dilbeck did not actually claim compliance, we fail to see any reasonable likelihood that its unnecessary inclusion resulted in the risk of substantial prejudice to Dilbeck. [60] Accordingly, we find no reversible error in Instruction 22. [61]