Court Opinion

ID: 9694991
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:03:13.977132+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:07.450997
License: Public Domain

White, J.,
dissenting.
This case demonstrates that the use of a special verdict form in negligence cases will, as often as not, produce answers to special verdict questions inconsistent with the results as announced by the jury. The majority has seized on one wing of the inconsistencies, that of finding that the plaintiff was negligent and that the negligence was proximately responsible for 40 percent of the damages sustained. The majority ignored the answer to the other question, in which the jury specifically found that the plaintiff’s negligence was slight in comparison to the defendant’s negligence, which was gross.
In doing so, it relies on the case of Guerin v. Forburger, 161 Neb. 824, 74 N.W.2d 870 (1956), in which the court makes a gratuitous observation that since the damage to the automobile was in the amount of $1,250 and the jury returned a verdict of $687.50, 45 percent was more than slight as a matter of law. In that case there was no special verdict. Inherent in the verdict was a finding that the negligence of the plaintiff was slight in comparison to the defendant’s negligence.
In subsequent cases this court rejected the automatic rule, stating that
“[a] comparison of the negligence of the two parties involved in an accident cannot be easily translated into a mathematical ratio. This court has never adopted a rule that contributory negligence of more than a certain percent will bar recovery as a matter of law. The statute does not contemplate such a rule and we do not believe that the adoption of such a rule would further the *82administration of justice.”
(Emphasis supplied.)Nickal v. Phinney, 207 Neb. 281, 283, 298 N.W.2d 360, 362 (1980), quoting Burney v. Ehlers, 185 Neb. 51, 173 N.W.2d 398 (1970). It should also be noted that in Nickal v. Phinney the basis for the court’s decision in Guerin v. Forburger was removed when, in response to an attempt to question the holding in Cullinane v. Milder Oil Co., 174 Neb. 162, 116 N.W.2d 25 (1962), the court stated that
this court pointed out that the jury was not obliged to accept the undisputed testimony of the plaintiff or his doctor to the full extent of the damages claimed and that the determination of the amount of the damages after application of a comparative negligence instruction is for the jury.
Nickal v. Phinney, 207 Neb. at 283, 298 N.W.2d at 362.
The basis for the Guerin v. Forburger rule has been destroyed. The proposition that there is a level at which negligence is more than slight as a matter of law has never been the law in this state, and if it ever had been, it died in the next case in which this court considered the percentage argument.
In my view, the trial court’s decision should have been reversed and the verdict reinstated or, in the alternative if that were unacceptable, returned to the district court for retrial in view of the inconsistencies in the special verdict form.
Shanahan and Lanphier, J J., j oin in this dissent.