Court Opinion

ID: 9609520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 03:28:09.509145+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:50.946035
License: Public Domain

QUINN, Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. The jury’s special findings that Officer Lines was negligent and that his negligence was not a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s damages cannot be reconciled with the evidentiary state of the record and are logically inconsistent.
The complaint alleged that Officer Lines, knowing that the plaintiff’s husband was in possession of and had discharged a firearm, *1065thereafter negligently confronted the husband at the family home and, as a direct and proximate result of that confrontation, shot and killed the husband. The case was tried to the jury on this theory of negligence and no other. If the jury’s special finding of negligence means anything, it means that the jury was satisfied by a preponderance of the evidence that Officer Lines failed to use reasonable care in confronting the decedent at his home. To attribute to the jury’s special finding some other basis of negligence, as a majority does, is to engage in utter speculation.
Given the jury’s finding of negligence, its additional finding that the defendant’s negligence was not a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s damages is irreconcilable with the undisputed evidence. A proximate cause need not be the sole cause producing the claimed injury. E.g., Redman & Scripp, Inc., v. Douglas, 170 Colo. 208, 460 P.2d 231 (1969); Colorado Springs and Interurban Railway Co. v. Allen, 55 Colo. 391, 135 P. 790 (1913). A proximate cause, as applicable to this case, means a cause which, in natural and probable sequence, produced the claimed injury and without which the claimed injury would not have been sustained. C.J.I. (Civil) 9:26 (1st ed. 1976 Supp.). In other words, the defendant’s contributory act need only be so directly connected with the injury that, but for such act, the injury would not have occurred. E.g., Colorado Springs and Interurban Railway Co. v. Allen, supra, 55 Colo. at 395, 135 P. at 792.
The only legal basis to support the jury’s special finding on proximate causation is the principle of intervening cause. See, e.g., Calkins v. Albi, 163 Colo. 370, 431 P.2d 17 (1967); Albo v. Shamrock Oil and Gas Corp., et al., 160 Colo. 144, 415 P.2d 536 (1966). However, in this case the evidence was uncontradicted that the decedent was shot and killed by Officer Lines. There was no evidence of an unforeseen intervening cause which might have relieved the defendant of liability; nor was the jury instructed on intervening cause. If, for example, there had been evidence that the decedent killed himself by turning his own weapon on himself during the confrontation with Officer Lines, then the jury’s special findings would be reconcilable with the evi-dentiary state of the record. In the absence of any evidence on intervening cause, no such reconciliation is possible. A verdict which cannot be reconciled with the evidence is logically inconsistent and should not be permitted to stand. See, e.g., Kistler v. Halsey, 173 Colo. 540, 481 P.2d 722 (1971); Redman and Scripp, Inc. v. Douglas, supra.
I agree with the analysis of the Court of Appeals and I would reverse the judgment and remand for a new trial.