Court Opinion

ID: 9591648
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:06:13.487475+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:50.451216
License: Public Domain

COMPTON, J.,
dissenting.
The statement of facts contained in the majority opinion must be expanded, and corrected, so that the evidence will be viewed in the light most favorable to Paytes, the party who prevailed below and comes before us armed with a judgment of $50,000 as com*611pensation for severe injuries. The majority’s recitation draws inferences that are most favorable to the losing party in the trial court, contrary to established rules of appellate procedure.
This tragic accident occurred at approximately 2:25 a.m. Paytes, who had consumed no alcoholic beverages for about two and one-half hours, was travelling 55 miles per hour north on his proper side of the highway. He testified that he was “wide awake, stone sober,” and in “full control” of his automobile.*
As he reached a straight section of Route 20, Paytes observed the headlights of the Hereford car approaching from the opposite direction on its proper side of the two-lane highway. The oncoming vehicle was being driven “at a high rate of speed with the lights on bright.” During cross-examination, Paytes estimated the speed of the Hereford vehicle at “around seventy miles per hour.”
Paytes testified he continued “up the road” and that “a split second” before the accident happened the other car, without lowering its headlight beams, “came into the middle of the road, square into the middle of the road.” The Hereford vehicle continued so that one-half of the car was in Paytes’ lane. At that instant, Paytes “swerved hard left to try to avoid the car.” As soon as Paytes swerved, the impact occurred. Paytes said that the Hereford vehicle seemed to remain under control in its proper lane of travel until the vehicles were approximately 15 feet apart; at that point the vehicle suddenly was driven “immediately in front of’ Paytes’ car.
At impact, the “bulk” or “majority” of the Hereford vehicle was in Paytes’ lane, with the “middle section” of the front in the center of the road, according to Paytes. At the moment of impact, according to Paytes, the “majority” of his vehicle was on his proper side of the highway, with “[mjaybe the front part” of the car in the southbound lane.
Witnesses who arrived on the scene after the accident and before the vehicles had been moved testified that the Hereford vehicle came to rest entirely in the northbound lane, with its front pointing generally north. Paytes’ vehicle was partially in the southbound lane, with its front in a northerly direction. The vehicles were approximately 15 feet apart. This testimony is consistent with photographs of the accident scene.
*612One of the investigating police officers testified that, after the accident, the Hereford vehicle was positioned with its left front wheel “on the center line.” Paytes’ vehicle came to rest with its left front wheel three feet ten inches from the western edge of the pavement; the left rear wheel was five feet ten inches from that edge. The officer found a 14-foot “mark” that “started on the center line and ... led to the front wheel of’ Paytes’ vehicle. The mark was made by the right front of the vehicle. The officer also determined that metal from the body of the Paytes’ vehicle had been “pushed against the right front wheel.”
Subsequent to the accident, the police examined the bulb from the left front parking lamp of Paytes’ vehicle. Based on study of the bulb filaments, a police expert witness testified that the force of the impact on the Paytes’ vehicle was from the right. The trial judge, however, gave “very little weight” to that testimony and said it failed to assist in locating the position of the vehicles in the road at impact.
In announcing his decision, the trial judge said he found Paytes’ “testimony credible and in accordance with the physical facts, and to a certain extent corroborated by the physical facts.” In my opinion, the trial court was correct.
The majority has misapplied the so-called Dead Man’s Statute. Drawing on an irrelevant hypothetical that internally is incorrect, as well as suggesting that Paytes was “driving on the wrong side of the road,” the majority confuses ultimate burden of proof and overall sufficiency of the evidence with the corroboration necessary under the statute in question.
The majority dwells on the “timing of the departure of the two vehicles from their respective lawful lanes of travel.” That is a burden-of-proof and sufficiency-of-the-evidence consideration. The dispositive issue in this appeal is whether the physical evidence gives strength to Paytes’ testimony; as the majority recognizes, the question is not whether such corroborative evidence is of itself sufficient to support the judgment. The issue is whether the physical facts tend to show the truth of Paytes’ testimony, or the probability of its truth; as the majority recognizes, the question is not whether Paytes’ testimony is corroborated on all material points.
This Court previously has endorsed a trial court’s ruling that certain physical evidence, such as tire marks and debris, found at the accident scene constituted corroboration as a matter of law. *613Whitmer v. Marcum, 214 Va. 64, 69, 196 S.E.2d 907, 910-11 (1973). Yet, the majority in the present case decides that such physical evidence, some of which is consistent with Paytes’ theory of the case, is not corroboration as a matter of law.
In my opinion, there is ample corroboration to support a judgment in Paytes’ favor. In essence, he contends that while driving in a lawful manner on his proper side of the highway, a vehicle being driven at an excessive speed suddenly moved into his lane. At that instant, the vehicles were 15 feet apart, and were closing at a combined speed of approximately 125 miles per hour. The testimony that Paytes was in his proper lane and “swerved hard left” in an attempt to evade the other car is corroborated by the 14-foot mark that “started” at the center line of the roadway. This mark clearly was made after the impact, after the force of the collision caused the metal on the front of the Paytes’ vehicle to be pushed against the right front wheel, and after Paytes moved from the proper lane of travel. The extent to which Paytes placed the Hereford vehicle on the wrong side of the highway at impact is corroborated by the damage to both vehicles shown in the photographs. That testimony is also borne out by the fact that the Hereford car was entirely in the northbound lane after the accident, facing in the direction from which it had come.
For these reasons, I would affirm the judgment below.
STEPHENSON, J., joins in dissent.

 The trial court discredited portions of the expert testimony, highlighted by the majority, about Paytes’ alleged blood alcohol level; the judge said he “couldn’t get any sense from [that] testimony.”