Court Opinion

ID: 9535168
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:46:11.37509+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:33:10.896202
License: Public Domain

Rosellini, J.
(dissenting in part) — I dissent to that part of the majority opinion which holds that the giving of instruction No. 15 was prejudicial error.
In the first place, the objections which the majority make to the instruction were not urged by the plaintiff, and in the second, I do not believe the instruction is open to those objections. The court did not instruct the jurors that if they could not agree, they should find for the defendants, but rather that, if they were unable to determine from the evidence whose negligence, if anyone was negligent, was the proximate cause of the accident, the verdict should be for the defendants. The jury had been told that ten of their number must agree on a verdict, and it is to be presumed that they understood and followed this instruction. Furthermore, the jurors were not told in instruction No. 15 that they should find for the defendants if they had any difficulty in determining the proximate cause, but only if they were *452unable to make a determination. “Difficulty” and “inability” are hardly synonymous terms. Only by changing the language of the instruction can the objections of the majority be sustained.
It is the plaintiff’s position that, when viewed in the light of the pleadings and the evidence, the effect of this instruction was to place the burden of disproving contributory negligence on her. According to her interpretation of the instruction, if the jury was unable to determine from the evidence whether or not the decedent’s negligence contributed to his injuries, as a proximate cause thereof, it might nevertheless find for the defendants even though it had also found as a fact that the negligence of Harrison was a proximate cause of the accident.
In another instruction, the jury was told that the burden was on the plaintiff to prove that the defendant Harrison’s negligence was a proximate cause of the injuries; and the burden was on the defendants to prove that the contributory negligence of the decedent was a proximate cause of the accident. Reading these instructions together, I do not see how the jury could reasonably reach the result feared by the plaintiff. The questioned instruction, by its terms, would be applicable only if both parties failed to sustain their positions by a preponderance of the evidence; whereas, if the jury should find that the defendant Harrison’s negligence was a proximate cause, it would not be “unable to find . . . whose negligence, if anyone was negligent, was the direct and proximate cause of the injuries.”
The jury was adequately informed in other instructions that it might find that the accident was proximately caused by the negligence of either or both of the drivers, and in fact, the plaintiff does not object to the use of this term in the instruction.
It is not necessary that each instruction contain a complete exposition of the law applying to the point in controversy. Hutton v. Martin, 41 Wn. (2d) 780, 252 P. (2d) 581. Instructions must be read as a whole, and I think that any confusion which might possibly have resulted from the language of this instruction was overcome by the plain and *453explicit instructions on burden of proof and proximate cause which were given by the court and to which the plaintiff makes no objection. The import of the instruction is simply that, if both parties fail to sustain the burden of proving proximate cause, the verdict must be for the defendant.
The plaintiff also suggests that by inserting the phrase “if anyone was negligent,” the court introduced the issue of unavoidable accident into the case, thereby prejudicing her cause. But I do not think the phrase amounts to an instruction on unavoidable accident. It does no more than to remind the jury that it was at liberty to find that neither party had sustained the burden of proving negligence. It was therefore proper.
The judgment should be affirmed.
Ott, J., concurs with Rosellini, J.