Court Opinion

ID: 9754489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:02:36.258143+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:54.103170
License: Public Domain

HUTCHINSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I dissent. Mr. Justice Zappala, in the Opinion Announcing the Judgment of the Court, has apparently overlooked the fact that contributory negligence is no longer the law in Pennsylvania. In 1978, the legislature created a modified comparative negligence system. 42 Pa.C.S. § 7102. Any plaintiff whose fault is not greater than the defendant’s will recover at least a portion of his damages. This is a radical departure from contributory negligence where a plaintiff who was negligent in any degree could not recover anything. Rules fashioned in response to the often cruel rigors *654of contributory negligence should not be blindly continued under our new system of comparative negligence.
Under contributory negligence plaintiff’s negligence and defendant’s negligence are separate and distinct. Defendant’s culpability, no matter how great, is of no moment if the plaintiff was negligent to any degree. Comparative negligence, on the other hand, espouses a more holistic approach. Fault for the accident is assumed, and the jury, based on the evidence, apportions that fault between the parties. Thus, plaintiff’s negligence and defendant’s negligence are no longer separate and distinct, but inversely related to each other. As one party’s fault increases, the other party’s necessarily decreases. In fact, plaintiff’s and defendant’s negligence constitute together one inseparable whole because they are both apportioned out of the same pool of total fault.
The presumption of due care, as applied by the majority, conflicts with comparative negligence’s goal of fairly apportioning fault and liability by giving plaintiffs such as Waddle an unfair advantage. A defendant, of course, is not entitled to the same presumption, though his fault is part of the same unity as plaintiff’s. The fault presumed not to be plaintiff’s is necessarily added to defendant’s share of the whole. Under comparative negligence, the party alleging negligence has the burden of coming forward with evidence. Thus, I believe that the presumption of due care has outlived its usefulness as evidence of a plaintiff’s due care.1
It may continue to have a function as an allocator of the burden of producing evidence but, as such, should disappear once evidence of the actual event is produced.2 Shifting the burden adequately protects amnesiac plaintiffs. The harshness of contributory negligence which the presumption, in *655part, addressed3 has been eliminated by comparative negligence. In any case, I believe that we should consider the needs and nature of the comparative negligence system and the place of the presumption of due care in it.
In addition, even if the presumption remains viable, I do not believe that the instruction requested by appellee is proper under any circumstances. The jury should have been told that the presumption of due care is effective in the absence of evidence to the contrary, and it is the jury’s task to decide if such evidence exists. If believed, the testimony of Macklin and Nelkin, to my mind, is sufficient to rebut the presumption. Nelkin testified that she was driving on Wabash Avenue and Waddle suddenly appeared about twenty feet in front of her. Macklin testified that immediately before the impact, Waddle shut his pick-up truck’s hood and walked toward the roadway. Thus, the jury should have been instructed that the presumption is effective only if they do not find evidence that rebuts it. Since one’s actions are judged by an objective standard, the jury could find as a fact that Waddle did not exercise due care.
Therefore, I would reverse Superior Court and reinstate the Common Pleas verdict.

. If, in fact, it ever had any; our own precedent states that the presumption itself has no weight as evidence. Moore v. Esso Standard Oil Co., 364 Pa. 343, 345, 72 A.2d 117, 119-20 (1950).

. Many respected commentators have suggested that presumptions do nothing but shift the burden of production. E.g., McCormick on Evidence 974-75 (E. Cleary, 3d ed. 1984); 9 Wigmore’s Evidence, § 2487 (J. Chadbourn Rev.1981).

. The presumption permits an amnesiac plaintiff to survive a judgment n.o.v. or directed verdict based on contributory negligence. See, e.g., Keasey v. Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad Co., 404 Pa. 63, 170 A.2d 328 (1961).