Court Opinion

ID: 9640488
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:07:01.118278+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:30.269950
License: Public Domain

REID, Associate Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join Judge Ferren’s opinion fully except for the last paragraph which enters judgment for the defendant doctor. I believe that the case should be remanded for a new trial, given the confusion attending the jury’s deliberations, as evidenced by the fact that after receiving the jury verdict form on the second day of its deliberations, the jury sent four notes to the judge with questions about the doctrine of last clear chance. Subsequently, the jury sent two more notes to the judge, which still expressed confusion and an inability to come to an agreement. Only after receiving the Winters instruction did the jury reach a verdict. Under these circumstances, I would not speculate as to how the jurors would have resolved the informed consent issue had they been instructed properly and had they received a verdict form at the beginning of their deliberations. Consequently, I would reverse and remand the case for a new trial.
Separate Statement by Senior Judge FERREN, joined by Associate Judge REID.
The facts as they unfold here, the jury’s understandable confusion, and the complicated legal analysis applicable at trial and on appeal, demonstrate why this jurisdiction should adopt the doctrine of “comparative negligence” under which plaintiff and defendant, when both are negligent, assume financial responsibility for the plaintiff’s injury in proportion to the respective fault of each. See District of Columbia v. Huysman, 650 A.2d 1323, 1327 (D.C.1994) (Ferren, J., concurring); id. at 1328 (Farrell, J., concurring); WMATA v. Jones, 443 A.2d 45, 53 (D.C.1982) (Ferren, J., joined by Newman, C.J., concurring). Presently, when both plaintiff and defendant are negligent, District of Columbia courts must apply the awkward — and almost universally-discarded — doctrine barring a plaintiff’s recovery entirely because of the plaintiff’s “contributory negligence,” unless the plaintiff can prove that the defendant, concurrently negligent with the plaintiff, later had a second, “last clear chance” to avoid the injury (when the plaintiff could not do so) and failed to take it. The defendant is then held to pay for the injury 100 percent despite the plaintiff’s own negligence that contributed, in part, to her harm. Preferable to this either-or analysis would be the jury’s assessment of proportional fault as the basis for any recovery, as most jurisdictions by now have recognized.