Court Opinion

ID: 9845536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:23:58.455407+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:13.216838
License: Public Domain

SENIOR JUSTICE POFF, with whom JUSTICE COMPTON
joins, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I subscribe to the majority’s opinion in all respects save one. I dissent from the holding that the evidence was insufficient to raise a jury question on contributory negligence.
The majority reaches its decision as a matter of law. Contributory negligence is a question of law only when “reasonable minds could not differ”. Artrip v. E.E. Berry Equipment Company, 240 Va. 354, 358, 397 S.E.2d 821, 823 (this day decided). Whether a plaintiff is guilty of a negligent act or omission that proximately contributed to the injury of which he complains is, definitionally, a question of fact. As a rule of general application in Virginia, juries decide such questions. A question of fact may arise from express contradictions in the testimonial evidence or from any diversity of inferences that reasonable minds might draw from the evidence, testimonial and physical, considered as a whole.
Although not necessarily so, the jury in this case may have rested its verdict on a finding of contributory negligence as defined in the instruction given over Ring’s objection. This Court must assume that it did when considering whether the evidence was sufficient to support a jury instruction on contributory negligence. Consequently, we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the parties to whom the jury awarded its verdict. In my view, the evidence of contributory negligence in this case was substantially “more than a scintilla of evidence introduced on the subject”, Yeary v. Holbrook, 171 Va. 266, 287-88, 198 S.E. 441, 451 (1938).
This Court recently upheld a trial court’s refusal to find a plaintiff guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law. In Cofield v. Nuckles, 239 Va. 186, 387 S.E.2d 493 (1990), Nuckles, a pedestrian, attempted to cross a four-lane street. After crossing two lanes behind traffic stopped at an intersection, Nuckles entered the third lane in front of a van in response to the driver’s hand signal to proceed. When Nuckles entered the fourth lane, he was struck by a vehicle driven by Cofield.
*330In that case, as here, we held that the driver who made the signal was not liable to the plaintiff. Moreover, in Cofield we held that the primary negligence of the defendant and the contributory negligence of the plaintiff were questions of fact for the jury and we remanded the case for a new trial on those issues. Id. at 194; 387 S.E.2d at 498. I find no legally relevant fact which distinguishes Cofield from this case; the principles applied there should be applied here.
As in Cofield, the evidence and the inferences it raises make contributory negligence a jury issue in this case. First, the evidence of Ring’s speed was conflicting. The investigating officer testified that Ring had told him at the scene of the collision that her speed was “seven miles-per-hour.” At trial, Ring estimated her speed at “about 15 to 25 miles-an-hour”. Considering the change in Ring’s story, the jury reasonably could have inferred that she knew when she was confronted by the officer that she had been driving too fast under the circumstances obtaining. The evidence was that Ring was travelling downgrade on a familiar road, one partially blocked by construction barricades, and that she was a very short distance behind traffic in her lane as she approached an intersection with vehicles backed up in two lanes behind a red traffic light. Given such circumstances, the jury could have decided that Ring’s speed was an act of negligence.
Second, the jury was entitled to consider whether Ring kept a proper lookout. From the investigating officer’s testimony and his diagram of the accident scene the jury reasonably could have found that the opening in traffic to Ring’s right and the right front fender of Poelman’s car both were visible to Ring before the impact. The jury could have believed that if, as Ring testified, she did not see Poelman’s car in time to avoid the accident, it was because she was simply inattentive or because her speed required her to focus upon the cars ahead of her in the left turn lane. Having found Ring guilty of excessive speed, improper lookout, either or both, the jury was fully entitled to conclude that such negligence was a proximate cause of the accident.
Obviously, the majority takes the view that the jury should have reached the opposite conclusion. And I confess that, had I been a member of the jury that weighed this evidence, I might have done so. But “[cjourts are not free to disturb verdicts merely because the jury could have drawn different inferences or conclusions or because the judge may feel that another result might have been *331more reasonable.” Alvey v. Butchkavitz, 196 Va. 447, 456-57, 84 S.E.2d 535, 541 (1954). “[A] jury’s decision is final if it has a reasonable basis, whether or not the appellate court agrees with the jury’s estimate.” Tidewater-Raymond-Kiewit v. Duke, 210 Va. 143, 151, 169 S.E.2d 585, 591 (1969) (quoting Offshore Co. v. Robison, 266 F.2d 769, 777 (5th Cir. 1959)).
The test for determining whether a particular issue is a question of fact is whether reasonable minds could differ. I believe this evidence fully satisfies that test, and I would affirm the trial court’s judgment confirming the jury’s verdict.