Court Opinion

ID: 9720135
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:17:12.75222+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:13.459429
License: Public Domain

WORK, J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I dissent from that part of the majority opinion which upholds the trial court’s refusing to permit Schreefel’s *829claim for punitive damages to be decided by the jury. The trial court’s refusal to instruct the jury on punitive damages after the close of evidence effectively nonsuited Schreefel and the decision must be upheld or overturned on the well settled principles applicable to nonsuit. “A motion for nonsuit may properly be granted ‘ . . . when, and only when, disregarding conflicting evidence, and giving to plaintiff’s evidence all the value to which it is legally entitled, indulging in every legitimate inference which may be drawn from that evidence, the result is a determination that there is no evidence of sufficient substantiality to support a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. ’ (Card v. Boms, 210 Cal. 200, 202 [291 P. 190]; see also Blumberg v. M. & T. Inc., 34 Cal.2d 226, 229 [209 P.2d 1]; Golceff v. Sugarmann, 36 Cal.2d 152, 153 [222 P.2d 665].)” (Palmquist v. Mercer (1954) 43 Cal.2d 92, 95 [272 P. 26].)
Exemplary damages may be awarded when one acts in conscious disregard of the safety of others. (Civ. Code, § 3294.) The court prejudicially erred in removing this issue from the jury. (Phillips v. G. L. Truman Excavation Co. (1961) 55 Cal.2d 801, 807-808 [13 Cal.Rptr. 401, 362 P.2d 33].)
Schreefel alleged, and attempted to prove at trial, the Railroad acted in conscious disregard of his safety by not controlling the train sufficiently to be able to stop before striking vehicles they saw were stopped in plain view on the railroad crossing. An instruction regarding punitive damages was refused although the persons controlling the rolling train had often observed similar, extreme congestion at the crossing when employees of the shipyard attempted their routine mass exodus following a shift change. The situation was described as chaotic during those periods and the railroad knew there were no traffic controls to prevent motorists from intruding into the railroad crossing.
The railroad employees admit they braked to stop if the intersection did not clear but accelerated toward the intersection, unable to stop before reaching it after observing all stopped vehicles, including Schreefel’s, clear the track. However, Schreefel testified his vehicle had been stopped on the track behind cars waiting for a light to change to proceed onto the highway. When the light changed, lines of traffic on each side of him moved forward but he could not because a vehicle immediately in front of him suddenly rolled backwards. Schreefel panicked, killed his engine and could not get it started in time to avoid the train striking him. His car remained on the track from the time the engineer first saw the congested intersection until the accident. Schreefel’s version is as believable as that of the railroad employees, was corroborated by other witnesses, and is consistent with the well known customary rush-hour chaos in the area. If the jurors accepted Schreefel’s version, they reasonably could have *830believed the train accelerated without waiting for the crossing to clear. Under those facts an award of punitive damages would be proper.1
I would remand for trial on this limited issue.
The petition of plaintiff and appellant for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied July 27, 1983. Bird, C. J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

In a practical sense, it is probably unrealistic to believe a jury would award punitive damages to Schreefel, whose negligence is a significantly greater cause of his injuries than the railroad. The relevance of this factor, if any, was not argued on appeal.