Court Opinion

ID: 9503298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 19:40:48.797748+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:22.744905
License: Public Domain

DURHAM, J.,
dissenting.
The legal question that divides the majority and this dissent is straightforward: If the trial court has delivered an arguably erroneous jury instruction, should this court grant a new trial if the appellant can show only that the challenged instruction might have affected the appellant’s rights but cannot show that the instruction did affect those rights? In my view, an appellant fails to show the requisite harm from instructional error by demonstrating only that the jury might have applied the instruction in returning its verdict. Because the majority grants a new trial here even though the appellant can show only that the jury might have used the challenged instruction in returning its verdict, I dissent.
This case requires this court to apply ORS 19.415(2), which provides that “[n]o judgment shall be reversed or modified except for error substantially affecting the rights of a party.”1 This court has held, recently and repeatedly, that a *331trial error does not amount to an “error substantially affecting the rights of a party” under ORS 19.415(2) if the record demonstrates only that the error might have affected the appellant’s rights.
In Shoup v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 335 Or 164, 61 P3d 928 (2003), the court devoted an extensive analysis to the then-extant court-created rule that allowed the reversal of a judgment if the appellate court could not determine (“we can’t tell”) whether the particular trial error had led the jury to return an erroneous verdict. Following that analysis, the court held that awarding a new trial on appeal when the record showed only that the assigned error might have affected the outcome was not consistent with ORS 19.415(2). Rather, the court decided that that statute requires this court to *332grant a new trial if, but only if, the record shows that an error occurred and that the error did affect the outcome:
“The words of ORS 19.415(2) demonstrate that an error must cause something more than the ‘possibility of a different result before the appellate court may reverse a judgment. * * * Thus, an error ‘affecting’ a party’s rights is an error that can be said to ‘produce a material influence’ or ‘to have a detrimental influence’ on those rights, and not merely one that ‘might’ have changed the outcome of the case. The use of the adverb ‘substantially’ further limits the type of error that can result in reversal of a judgment. ‘Substantially’ means ‘in a substantial manner,’ and the relevant definition of‘substantial’ is ‘being of moment: IMPORTANT, ESSENTIAL.’
“Those definitions indicate how far defendant’s proposed ‘outcome might have been different’ standard is from the standard set out in ORS 19.415(2). The possibility that an error might have resulted in a different jury verdict is insufficient under the statute.”
Id. at 173 (emphases in original; citation omitted).
In Lyons v. Walsh & Sons Trucking Co., Ltd., 337 Or 319, 96 P3d 1215 (2004), the plaintiffs in a wrongful death case appealed from a judgment for the defendant based on a special jury verdict. The plaintiffs sought a new trial, claiming on appeal that the trial court, in instructing the jury, had misinterpreted former ORS 18.470 (2001), renumbered as ORS 31.600 (2003), regarding comparative fault. This court, however, independently examined the record and determined that it could not reach the plaintiffs’ instructional error issue. Instead, this court determined that the jury had simply answered “no” to a compound question on the special verdict form regarding the subjects of negligence and causation and that, as a result, the court could not tell if the jury’s defense verdict rested on a permissible or an arguably impermissible ground. This court stated:
“Our inability to determine which ground led the jury to decide as it did is important, because plaintiffs have focused all their arguments in this court on the second part of the question. That is, plaintiffs assert that the instructions that the trial court gave and the evidence that it admitted improperly permitted the jury to consider [police officer] *333Rector’s conduct in assessing whether [defendant] Walsh’s conduct was a substantial factor in causing the accident. But such errors by the trial court, if errors they were, are irrelevant if the jury decided the case instead on the pristine proposition that Walsh was not negligent.”
Id. at 325 (footnote omitted). The court quoted ORS 19.415(2) and recounted that Shoup had “explained that that statute requires more than speculation concerning whether an alleged error affected a jury’s verdictf.]” Id. Then, in a passage that has particular relevance to this case, the court stated:
“The jury verdict could have been based on one of two different rationales that the jury verdict form identified; it is impossible to tell which the jury used. Plaintiffs’ claims of error may or may not be well taken, but they depend on an assumption that the jury’s verdict was based on one rationale only. The present record does not support plaintiffs’ assumption, and, because they are asserting error, the consequences of the inadequacy of the record in that respect fall on plaintiffs. * * * That is, plaintiffs cannot show, on this record, that any of the alleged errors about which they complain ‘substantially affect[ed]’ their rights. Plaintiffs thus cannot prevail here.”
Id. at 326 (citation omitted). I will return to the rationale in Lyons later in this opinion.
With the foregoing review of the court’s current interpretation of ORS 19.415(2) in mind, I turn to a review of the pertinent facts of this case. It is necessary to do so, because the majority opinion discusses the facts in a manner that downplays or ignores certain facts that undermine its stated result, thus impeding rather than aiding this court’s assessment of the underlying legal question.
We must review the record in the light most favorable to the party who prevailed below, plaintiff. This is an action for breach of the uninsured motorist (UM) and personal injury protection (PIP) provisions of the automobile insurance policy that defendant sold to plaintiff. Defendant’s automobile insurance policy provided coverage for injuries caused by a “phantom” vehicle, which is one type of “uninsured” vehicle. In particular, the policy provides coverage for *334wrongful acts of the driver of an uninsured vehicle. Plaintiff may recover damages for breach of contract against defendant by demonstrating, among other things, that defendant refused to pay the benefits of the policy, and that plaintiff had a viable tort claim against the phantom vehicle driver and could have obtained a favorable judgment against him. Vega v. Farmers Ins. Co., 323 Or 291, 306, 918 P2d 95 (1996).
Plaintiff suffered serious personal injuries and incurred significant medical expenses as the result of an automobile accident with an unidentified “phantom” truck on October 24, 1997.1 refer in this opinion to that event as the “first accident.”
Plaintiff had a second automobile accident, and also suffered personal injuries, on August 6,1999. Plaintiff had a third automobile accident on August 2, 2002, and suffered additional personal injuries. Those accidents occurred before this case went to trial. Plaintiff developed the theory, and later claimed in court, that the damages that he suffered in the second and third accidents were the natural, direct, and foreseeable consequences of the first accident and, thus, defendant was liable under its UM “phantom vehicle” coverage for the damages that plaintiff suffered in the second and third accidents. I refer to those damages, as does the majority, as “aggravation” damages. Defendant asserted that it had no liability for any damages, including aggravation damages arising from the second and third accidents.
The trial court, prior to trial, had granted a partial summary judgment in plaintiffs favor on the question whether a “phantom vehicle,” within the meaning of defendant’s policy, had caused plaintiffs injuries in the first accident. That decision narrowed the questions that the jury was required to determine at trial. We may summarize those issues as follows:
1. What were plaintiffs monetary damages resulting from the first accident on October 24,1997, if any?
2. Were the damages that plaintiff suffered in the second and/or third accidents a consequence of the acts of the driver of the phantom vehicle? If so, what is the amount of those aggravation damages?
*335Each party submitted proposed jury instructions on those subjects. The trial court rejected the jury instructions submitted by the parties and, instead, drafted its own, as follows:
“SUBSEQUENT ACCIDENTS — AGGRAVATION OF PRIOR INJURIES
“The contract entered into by the plaintiff and the defendant sets forth that the defendant will provide coverage for all the natural, direct and proximate consequences of the wrongful acts of the driver of the phantom vehicle. If you find that the plaintiff was injured by those acts in the accident of October 24, 1997, and then had a subsequent accident in which the plaintiff suffered further injury which would not have occurred but for the original injury, the defendant may then be held liable for the enhancement or aggravation of plaintiffs injuries caused by the subsequent accident.
“Defendant’s liability would apply only to the injuries you attribute to the accident of October 24, 1997, and to any enhancement or aggravation of those injuries, not to any new injuries suffered by plaintiff in any subsequent accident.”
It is clear that the court’s instruction authorized the jury to award damages for injuries that plaintiff suffered in the first accident. The instruction additionally authorized the jury to award aggravation damages if the jury found that, during the second and third accidents, plaintiff suffered “further injury which would not have occurred but for the original injury” received in the first accident. The last sentence of the court’s instruction emphasized, to the point of redundancy, the compound nature of the jury’s authority: the jury could find defendant liable only for injuries incurred in the first accident. Separately, the jury also could find defendant liable for “any enhancement or aggravation of those injuries” in the second and third accidents, but could not award damages for “any new injuries suffered by plaintiff” in the later accidents. It is important to recognize that the jury instruction correctly did not require the jury to award damages for any of plaintiffs accidents, and correctly permitted the jury, if it so desired, to award damages solely for the first accident and to *336refuse to award any aggravation damages for the second and third accidents.
Defendant objected to the instruction. Significantly, defendant did not object to the instruction insofar as it permitted the jury to hold defendant liable for injuries incurred by plaintiff during the first accident. Rather, defendant contended that the instruction should not grant the jury the additional authority to award aggravation damages on the basis of any injuries suffered by plaintiff during the second and third accidents. It is only the latter contention regarding the court’s instruction that defendant pursues before this court. I assume without deciding that defendant’s latter contention about the court’s instruction is correct.
The parties and the court submitted a form of general verdict to the jury. The jury returned the general verdict, awarding plaintiff $50,000 and $25,000 in damages for breach of the UM and PIP insurance provisions, respectively. Because the parties and the court employed a general verdict only, the record does not indicate whether the jury based its award solely on the injuries plaintiff suffered during the first accident or, instead, on some combination of those original injuries plus other injuries suffered by plaintiff during the second and third accidents (or either of them). That is, nothing in the record signals whether the jury actually awarded any damages for any aggravation of plaintiffs injuries that the second or third accidents may have caused. What is clear from the record is that the jury had before it sufficient evidence to return its entire general verdict award in plaintiffs favor on the basis of the injuries that plaintiff suffered in the first accident alone, and no party argues to the contrary. That fact is central to any proper consideration of the assigned error on appeal, yet the majority fails to acknowledge it.
The majority states that “the trial court’s instruction gave the jury the wrong legal rule to apply. The instruction told the jury that it could hold Allstate liable for damages for which the jury could not, on this record, hold it legally responsible.” 344 Or at 322. That statement addresses the first step in any instructional error inquiry: Did the challenged instruction state the law erroneously? However, the instructional error dispute here concerns only the instruction *337regarding aggravation damages that plaintiff allegedly suffered in the second and third accidents discussed above. As noted, I assume for purposes of discussion that the instruction permitting the jury to award aggravation damages for the second and third accidents was erroneous. The majority commits error in failing to acknowledge that the instructional error dispute here concerns only the authorization to award aggravation damages for the second and third accidents.
The majority then proceeds to the second analytical step: Did the arguably erroneous instruction affect the outcome of the case? The correct rule in that regard appears in Waterway Terminals v. P. S. Lord, 256 Or 361, 370, 474 P2d 309 (1970), a case that the majority cites but fails to quote:
“As a result, cases should not be reversed upon instructions, despite technical imperfections, unless the appellate court can fairly say that the instruction probably created an erroneous impression of the law in the minds of the jurymen which affected the outcome of the case.”
(Emphasis added.) The emphasized portion of that rule does not permit reversal of a jury’s verdict for instructional error if the appellant shows only that the error might have affected that partys rights.
Instead of asking the correct question — whether the instruction regarding aggravation damages affected the verdict in this case — the majority, quoting Allstate’s arguments, twists the applicable legal standard to allow reversal if the challenged instruction merely “permits” an erroneous result:
“Allstate observes that, when an instruction tells the jury to apply the wrong legal rule and the erroneous instruction permits the jury to reach an incorrect result, this court consistently has held that the error substantially affects the party’s rights.”
344 Or at 322. For that proposition, the majority cites three cases, none of which supports the majoritys altered rule, and one of which, Waterway Terminals, contradicts it.
*338The majority’s alteration of the correct rule is misleading and distorts the proper application of ORS 19.415(2) in this case. We must assume, of course, that the jury carefully listened to and followed all the court’s instructions, and awarded damages in conformity with its view of the evidence. However, it did so only to the extent that the instructions permitted it to do so. Because the jury returned only a general verdict and because the challenged jury instruction stated the jury’s authority to award damages in a compound manner, as described above, we can only speculate about whether the jury’s award includes any sum for aggravation damages due to the second and third accidents. The majority errs in refusing to acknowledge that the record does not demonstrate that the jury awarded any sum for aggravation damages in response to the portion of the court’s instruction that defendant challenges.
Can this court, on the present record, reach and decide defendant’s claim that the court’s instruction erroneously permitted the jury to consider awarding aggravation damages for plaintiffs injuries received in his second or third accidents? This court’s extensive analysis in Shoup and Lyons of the meaning of ORS 19.415(2) indicates that the answer is “no.” Lyons, in particular, illuminates the proper analytical path here. According to Lyons, because neither the general verdict nor any other part of the record here shows that the jury’s damages award includes aggravation damages for the second and third accidents, defendant’s challenge to the instruction rests entirely on an unproven assumption that the jury did award aggravation damages. Defendant is the party who is asserting error and requesting relief from the judgment below. As Lyons held, “the consequences of the inadequacy of the record in that respect fall on the appealing party,” here, defendant.2 Defendant cannot demonstrate, as ORS 19.415(2) requires, that the error of *339which it complains “substantially affect[ed]” its rights. Thus, ORS 19.415(2) prevents this court from granting affirmative relief to defendant.
Lyons recognized that this court’s rationale in Shoup, which concerned the submission to a jury of both permissible and impermissible claims of injury, also applies when a jury verdict form reports a valid jury verdict but provides an unclear answer about how the jury resolved the case. Specifically, the Lyons court, on its own motion, declined to reach the claimed instructional error because the jury’s verdict form did not demonstrate with clarity that the jury had based its verdict on the assertedly erroneous portion of the challenged instruction. In the course of its discussion, the court included the following sentence:
“Nor did this case involve other kinds of asserted trial error, such as a faulty jury instruction, that may call for a different analysis of whether the error ‘substantially affect[s] the rights of a party’ under ORS 19.415(2).”
Lyons, 337 Or at 326.3 That sentence recognizes the obvious: different kinds of asserted trial error may call for different analysis. That includes, of course, asserted errors in a jury instruction. However, that sentence is not a holding that the court will not apply ORS 19.415(2) in cases, like Lyons and this case, where an appealing party’s claim of harm from an allegedly erroneous jury instruction is not shown clearly in the record.
The majority also attempts to distinguish Shoup on the ground that Shoup categorically differentiated other cases involving asserted errors in jury instructions, citing the court’s analysis, in a footnote, of Hernandez v. Barbo Machinery Co., 327 Or 99, 957 P2d 147 (1998). Shoup, 335 Or at 172 n 2. Hernandez, decided five years before Shoup, had applied the then-accurate standard under ORS 19.415(2), *340that a party’s rights were substantially affected by a trial error — there, an erroneous jury instruction — if the outcome either would have or may have been different had the error not occurred. The correctness of Hernandez’s application of that standard in 1998 was not an issue before the court in Shoup. Nevertheless, this court stated in the footnote in question: “We do not, however, question the conclusion reached by this court in Hernandez. The error injury instructions at issue in Hernandez was ‘reversible’ under ORS 19.415(2).” Shoup, 335 Or at 172 n 2.
Those two sentences may be debated from several viewpoints. However, it is not debatable that they are quite conclusory and provide no analysis whatever to support their accuracy. Moreover, the second sentence constitutes only dictum and does not represent an authoritative holding of the court. Again, the majority overblows the significance of the two sentences in a footnote by stating that the instructional error in Hernandez “marks the limit of Shoup’s holding[,]” 344 Or at 324, and that Shoup “reaffirmed” the Hernandez court’s conclusion that instructional error alone substantially affects a party’s rights under ORS 19.415(2) if the error “may have” led to a different outcome. Id. at 325.
Finally, the majority cites State v. Pine, 336 Or 194, 82 P3d 130 (2003). In Pine, the defendant appealed from a criminal conviction for third-degree assault under ORS 163.165(l)(e). He argued that the trial court had erred in instructing the jury by allowing a conviction without proof that the defendant himself had caused any physical injury to the victim but, instead, merely had aided another in causing the injury. After the parties briefed the case, but before oral argument, the state brought Shoup, which this court decided earlier the same year, to the court’s attention. The state contended that there was some evidence in the record that defendant in fact had personally caused physical injury to the victim. Thus, according to the state, the defendant could not establish that he had been prejudiced by the alleged instructional error in the trial court. This court distinguished Shoup, responding that, even if the jury had believed defendant’s version of the facts, the instructional error would have led to a conviction for a nonexistent crime. Id. at 200. After examining the statute in question in light of the defendant’s *341version of the facts, the court stated, inconsistently, that the instructional error “would have affected the outcome of the case. That is so, because the jury could have convicted defendant of third-degree assault under the instruction even if it found that he had not caused physical injury to [the victim] * * *.” Id. at 210 (emphases added). The opinion in Pine did not confront the inconsistency of its conclusions that, on the one hand, the instructional error affected the outcome of the case and, on the other hand, the error could have affected the outcome.
Apart from that analytical inconsistency, the Pine opinion must be viewed in context. The criminal trial in Pine occurred long before Shoup was decided, and the steps that the defendant’s trial counsel took to preserve the error at the trial were sufficient under the rules of criminal procedure that existed at that time. Had Shoup predated the trial, competent counsel with notice of that case might have taken additional steps to confirm the existence of prejudice from the court’s instruction.
However, even if we conclude that Pine’s “possibility of prejudice” discussion did reflect the court’s view in that criminal case, that establishes only that this court has written inconsistently in deciding Pine, Shoup, and Lyons. There are good reasons to follow the more explicit discussion of the issue by this court in Shoup and Lyons.
As Lyons in particular emphasized, the core problem in cases of this kind does not concern the allegedly erroneous instruction. Instead, the problem concerns the deficiencies and ambiguities in an appellate record that simply fails to show that the challenged instruction affected the outcome of the case. Shoup and Lyons hold that the appealing party has the responsibility to make an adequate record regarding the existence of genuine prejudice from the asserted trial error or suffer the consequences. In this case, the majority simply ignores the consequence that it imposed in Lyons. It is illogical for the majority to claim that its result here is consistent with the rationale in Lyons.
In a final confusing twist, the majority purports to distinguish the Lyons case on the ground that it involved a form of jury verdict, not a claimed faulty jury instruction, as *342here. But the problem in Lyons was not that the form of the jury verdict contained an error — indeed, the special jury verdict format was not erroneous — but instead that neither the verdict form nor any other part of the record demonstrated that the jury in fact had applied the challenged jury instruction in reaching its verdict (i.e., that the challenged instruction affected the outcome of the jury’s verdict). That is precisely the argument that plaintiff makes in this case, and the court should give the same answer here that it gave in Lyons. Thus, the majority relies on a distinction without a real difference.
By asserting that Lyons is distinguishable, rather than explaining or overruling the holding in Lyons, the majority asserts to the trial bench and bar that both this case and Lyons, despite their logically inconsistent results, are the law of Oregon. The majority’s response will lead to needless and expensive litigation about whether, under the conflicting results in this case and in Lyons, an appellate court can decide that an asserted error in part of a compound jury instruction warrants a new trial.
In a challenge to only a part of a jury’s compound authority to return a verdict, ORS 19.415(2) requires a showing on review that the challenged aspect of the jury’s authority affected the verdict. In assessing whether such an error requires reversal, it should not matter to the court whether the trial court explained the jury’s compound authority in a jury instruction (as here) or in a special verdict form (as in Lyons). This court should not have two opposite standards for reversible error that depend only on the particular procedural device that the trial court selected in describing the jury’s compound authority. Yet that is precisely the import of the majority’s assertion that Lyons is distinguishable from this case.
This court should not have two substantively different standards for granting relief under ORS 19.415(2): one for cases involving claimed errors in jury instructions, in which a showing of potential prejudice to the appellant’s rights will suffice, and a different one for cases involving other claimed trial errors, in which only a showing of actual *343prejudice will suffice.4 Defendant stands in the same position, as a matter of legal analysis, as the plaintiffs in Lyons who sought review of an allegedly erroneous instruction regarding comparative negligence. The appealing party in each case asks this court to make the same unwarranted assumption that the jury in fact employed the challenged part of the jury instructions in rendering its verdict. This court refused to address the asserted instructional error in Lyons because the record did not show that the jury actually based some part of its verdict on the challenged instruction. This court, as noted, should give the same answer to defendant here that it gave to the appealing parties in Lyons. ORS 19.415(2) has the same meaning for both cases. Because the majority fails to apply ORS 19.415(2) in the same way that it applied that statute in Lyons, I respectfully dissent.

 This court must give a consistent interpretation to the legal requirement in OES 19.415(2) that a legal error have a substantial effect on the rights of any party *331that wishes to challenge the error because substantially the same requirement appears in several other areas of Oregon law. ORS 40.025(1), which codifies OEC 103(1), provides:
“Evidentiary error is not presumed to be prejudicial. Error may not be predicated upon a ruling which admits or excludes evidence unless a substantial right of the party is affected[.]”
(Emphasis added.)
ORCP 12 B provides, in part:
“The court shall, in every stage of an action, disregard any error or defect in the * * * proceedings which does not effect the substantial rights of the adverse party.”
(Emphasis added.)
Finally, Article VII (Amended), section 3, of the Oregon Constitution provides, in part:
“If the supreme court shall be of opinion, after consideration of all the matters thus submitted, that the judgment of the court appealed from was such as should have been rendered in the case, such judgment shall be affirmed, notwithstanding any error committed during the trial; or if, in any respect, the judgment appealed from should be changed, and the supreme court shall be of opinion that it can determine what judgment should have been entered in the court below, it shall direct such judgment to be entered in the same manner and with like effect as decrees are now entered in equity cases on appeal to the supreme court.”
Under settled Oregon law, those quoted provisions require a showing that legal error actually affects a substantial right of a party before the court will grant relief from the error. See, e.g., Scanlon v. Hartman, 282 Or 505, 511, 579 P2d 851 (1978) (“To warrant reversal the ruling of the trial court must be not only erroneous, but prejudicial!]” (citing Edward, Guardian, v. Hoevet, 185 Or 284, 200 P2d 955 (1949)). However, the majority’s new standard, requiring a new trial where there is only a possibility that the error affected the appellant’s rights, places that settled Oregon law in doubt.

 The following passage from Shoup, quoted in Lyons, is especially pertinent here:
“ ‘The rule embodied in ORS 19.415(2) is neutral as between plaintiffs and defendants; it places the burden to make a record that demonstrates prejudicial error on whichever party loses in the trial court and then seeks reversal or modification of the judgment on appeal.’ ”
Lyons, 337 Or at 326 (quoting Shoup, 335 Or at 174).

 The quoted sentence from Lyons is ambiguous and probably erroneous and misleading. Contrary to that sentence, the plaintiff in Lyons did seek to challenge an assertedly erroneous jury instruction. The court declined to address that assigned error because the record on appeal, including the special verdict returned by the jury, failed to demonstrate that the allegedly faulty instruction in fact affected the jury’s verdict. Thus, properly analyzed, Lyons does identify a circumstance in which this court, in applying ORS 19.415(2), should decline to address a challenge to an arguably erroneous jury instruction.

 The confusion resulting from the conflicting results here and in Lyons should lead prudent trial counsel to protect their appellate records wherever possible by requesting the use of special verdict interrogatories that identify precisely a jury’s possible application of any challenged jury instruction in reaching a verdict. Additionally, trial counsel should carefully examine proposed special jury verdict forms, and revise or eliminate passages that express in a compound manner the jury’s authority to determine issues surrounding liability, damages, or affirmative defenses.