Court Opinion

ID: 9531834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 04:15:01.486104+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:28:35.874843
License: Public Domain

TRAYNOR, J.
I concur in the judgment. I cannot agree, however, with the doctrine set forth in the majority opinion that an act or a failure to act in violation of a statute like the Vehicle Code is merely “presumptive evidence of negligence,” which may be rebutted by showing that the act or omission was justifiable or excusable under the circumstances, with the excuse or justification a question of fact for the jury. This doctrine is in effect a modified form of the doctrine that the violation of a statute (herein used to include an ordinance) is merely evidence of negligence. Under the ordinary evidence-of-negligence doctrine the jury, while obliged to consider the statutory standard, is free to substitute a standard of its own. Under the majority opinion it is likewise free to do so, if the one violating the statute offers evidence of excuse or justification. .Since it is a question of fact for the jury whether the excuse or justification is sufficient, the result is that one violating the statute need only offer proof that he acted as a reasonably prudent person under the circumstances, and the jury is then free to conclude therefrom that he was justified in violating the statute unless “reasonable men can draw but one inference . . . pointing unerringly to . . . negligence.”
The statement is frequently found in the cases that an act in violation of a statute “is presumptively an act of negligence *594and while the defendant is permitted to rebut such presumption by showing that the act was justifiable or excusable under the circumstances, until so rebutted it is conclusive. ’ ’ (Mora v. Favilla, 186 Cal. 199, 202 [199 P. 17]; see, also, Berkovitz v. American River Gravel Co., 191 Cal. 195, 199 [215 P. 675]; Dewhirst v. Leopold, 194 Cal. 424, 431 [229 P. 30]; Harris v. Johnson, 174 Cal. 55, 58 [161 P. 1155, Ann.Cas. 1918E 560, L.R.A. 1917C 477]; Rath v. Bankston, 101 Cal.App. 274, 281 [281 P. 1081].) The vice of such a statement is that it leaves to the jury the determination of the effect of a statute, a question of law that properly belongs to the court. Presumptions are used in ascertaining what the facts are, not in determining what the law is. (See, Wigmore, Evidence, 3d ed. §2490.) If the “presumption” can be rebutted merely by showing that one charged with violating the statute acted as a reasonably prudent person under the circumstances, "the controlling standard is no longer the statutory rule, but the view of the jury as to what constitutes reasonable conduct.
The vital question, presented at the outset, is whether the statutory standard is applicable at all. If it is, the conduct of the parties must be measured by that standard, and the jury is not free to determine what a reasonably prudent person would have done under the circumstances. If there is sufficient excuse or justification, there is ordinarily no violation of a statute, and the statutory standard is inapplicable. If a statute is so drawn as not to be susceptible of such a construction, so that it would impose liability without fault, the statutory standard is ordinarily not an appropriate one in a negligence case and should be rejected by the court. (Clinkscales v. Carver, 22 Cal.2d 72, 75 [136 P.2d 777] ; see Morris, Criminal Statutes and Tort Liability, 46 Harv.L.Rev. 453, 457.) It is nee'dlessly circuitous and confusing, and productive of caprice and conflict in decisions, to instruct the jury that they should! first determine whether the conduct in question fell below the statutory standard and that they should then determine whether such conduct was justifiable under the circumstances. It is a question of law in each case whether the acts were in violation of the statute, or excepted therefrom, or if not excepted, whether liability without fault would be imposed by adopting the statutory standard. It is of course a question of fact whether the alleged acts occurred.
A majority of American courts have adopted the doctrine that the violation of a statute constitutes negligence per s.% *595towards persons harmed as a result of acts or omissions constituting such violation, if the statute was designed to protect such persons against that kind of harm, even though the statute provides criminal sanctions only and makes no reference to civil liability. (See, James, Accident Liability, 55 Yale L.J. 365, 367; Prosser, Torts, § 39; Thayer, Public Wrong and Private Action, 27 Harv.L.Rev. 317; Restatement, Torts, § 286.) The courts of this state have frequently followed this doctrine. (Siemers v. Eisen, 54 Cal. 418, 420; Driscoll v. Market Street etc. Ry. Co., 97 Cal. 553, 565 [32 P. 591, 33 Am.St.Rep. 203] ; McKune v. Santa Clara V. M. & L. Co., 110 Cal. 480, 486 [42 P. 980]; Benjamin v. Noonan, 207 Cal. 279, 283 [277 P. 1045] ; Cragg v. Los Angeles Trust Co., 154 Cal. 663 [98 P. 1063, 16 Ann.Cas. 1061] ; Baillargeon v. Myers, 180 Cal. 504, 507 [182 P. 37] ; Clinkscales v. Carver, 22 Cal.2d 72, 75 [136 P.2d 777] ; Hopper v. Bulaich, 27 Cal.2d 431, 434 [164 P.2d 483] ; King v. City of Long Beach, 67 Cal.App.2d 1, 6 [153 P.2d 445]; Alechoff v. Los Angeles G. & E. Corp., 84 Cal.App. 33, 39 [257 P. 569].)
It is clear that the legislative standard is controlling if the statute expressly provides for civil liability. Confusion has arisen in the past from a failure to understand why the legislative standard governs civil liability when the statute prescribes criminal sanctions only. The reason is simply that the courts under common law principles make the legislative standard controlling and take the formulation of a standard from the jury, when they find that the criminal statute has been enacted not merely in the interest of the community as a whole but to protect a general class of persons, of which the party invoking the statute is a member, against the kind of harm that has been sustained. The decision as to what should be the controlling standard is made by the court, whether it instructs the jury to determine what would have been due care of a man of ordinary prudence under the circumstances or to follow the standard formulated by a statute. The latter standard determines civil liability, not because the Legislature has so provided, but because the courts recognize that, with respect to the conduct in question, the duties of the parties are determined by the statute. (The legislative standard may be controlling even in situations in which there is technically no crime. (Clinkscales v. Carver, 22 Cal.2d 72, 75 [136 P.2d 777] ; see, also, Polk v. City of Los Angeles, 26 Cal.2d 519, *596541-542 [159 P.2d 931].) If the forbidden conduct were merely evidence of negligence, the jury would be free to substitute its own standard of reasonable conduct, and to approve conduct that the Legislature has declared so dangerous as to call for criminal punishment. “Negligence is failure to exercise the care required by law. Where a statute defines the standard of care and the safeguards required to meet a recognized danger, then as we have said, no other measure may be applied in determining whether a person has carried out the duty of care imposed by law. Failure to observe the standard imposed by statute is negligence, as a matter of law.” (Lehman, J. in Tedla v. Ellman, 280 N.Y. 124 [19 N.E.2d 987, 990].) “By the very terms of the hypothesis, to omit, wilfully or heedlessly, the safeguards prescribed by law for the benefit of another that he may be preserved in life or limb, is to fall short of the standard of diligence to which those who live in organized society are under a duty to conform. . . . Jurors have no dispensing power, by which they may relax, the duty that one traveler on the highway owes under the statute to another. It is error to tell them that they have.” (Cardozo, J. in Martin v. Herzog, 228 N.Y. 164 [126 N.E. 814, 815].)
Some statutes, such as traffic laws, are enacted, not to prevent acts that the community may regard as inherently undesirable, but to prescribe uniform and certain rules of conduct in the interest of safety. Such rules are authoritative declarations as to how persons shall act, and must be observed because regulations of some kind are essential. “Vehicular traffic can proceed safely and without recurrent traffic tangles only if vehicles observe accepted rules of the road. Such rules, and especially the rule that all vehicles proceeding in one direction must keep to a designated part or side of the road— in this country the right hand side—have been dictated by necessity and formulated by custom. The general use of automobiles has increased in unprecedented degree the number and speed of vehicles. Control of traffic becomes an increasingly difficult problem. Rules of the road, regulating the rights and duties of those who use the highways, have, in consequence, become increasingly important. The Legislature no longer leaves to custom the formulation of such rules. Statutes now codify, define, supplement, and, where changing conditions suggest change in rule, even change rules which formerly rested on custom.” (Lehman, J., in Tedla v. Ellman, 280 N.Y. *597124 [19 N.E.2d 987,989].) In such a field, “when the Legislature has spoken, the standard of care required is no longer what the reasonably prudent man would do under the circumstances but what the Legislature has commanded. ’ ’ (Tedla v. Ellman, supra, at p. 990 [19 N.E.2d ].)
An instructive analogy may be drawn between traffic rules and navigation rules designed to prevent collisions at sea. It is recognized that the navigation rules rather than what the conduct of a person of ordinary prudence would have been under the circumstances furnish the standard as to whether a collision has been caused by negligence of a navigator (The Pennsylvania, 19 Wall. (86 U.S.) 125, 135 [22 L.Ed. 148]; The Suffolk, 258 F. 219, 221 [169 C.C.A. 287]; Belden v. Chase, 150 U.S. 674, 702-703 [14 S.Ct. 264, 37 L.Ed. 1218]), and that “it is necessary that the courts should rigorously enforce the collision rules that the object for which they were framed may be attained.” (The Stifinder, 275 F. 271, 277; The Oregon, 158 U.S. 186, 202 [15 S.Ct. 804, 39 L.Ed. 943].) This same reasoning should be applicable to the rules of the Vehicle Code, and this has been the view of the courts of this state, which have held that conduct in violation of the Vehicle Code is negligence as a matter of law. (Benjamin v. Noonan, 207 Cal. 279, 283 [277 P. 1045] ; Hurtel v. Albert Cohn, Inc., 5 Cal.2d 145, 147 [52 P.2d 922] ; Lahti v. McMenamin, 204 Cal. 415,418 [268 P. 644]; Bresee v. Los Angeles Traction Co., 149 Cal. 131, 139 [85 P. 152, 5 L.RA.N.S. 1059]; Ferguson v. Nakahara, 43 Cal.App.2d 435, 443 [110 P.2d 1091]; Reeves v. Lapinta, 25 Cal.App.2d 680, 681 [78 P.2d 465]; Scragg v. Sallee, 24 Cal.App. 133, 144 [140 P. 706] ; Mazgedian v. Swift & Co., 22 Cal.App.2d 570, 572 [71 P.2d 833]; Duncan v. J. H. Corder & Son, 18 Cal.App.2d 77, 83 [62 P.2d 1387] ; see 2 Cal.Jur. Ten-Year Supp., 226-227; 19 Cal.Jur. 632.) The Legislature in revising the Vehicle Code from time to time presumably knew that the courts had established this doctrine, and in 1943 it expressly recognized the doctrine when it provided in section 403.5 that conduct in violation of the provisions of the Vehicle Code shall not be regarded as “negligence per se” if a federal regulation authorizes such conduct.
Extraordinary circumstances may justify conduct that appears to violate the letter of a statute but which is impliedly excepted therefrom, if obedience is substantially impossible or deviation from the letter of the statute is necessary *598to serve its purpose. “If a criminal statute or ordinance which prohibits a particular act is construed to permit such an act to be done under conditions without criminal responsibility such an act may be done under the same conditions without creating civil liability under the statute or ordinance. Many statutes and ordinances are. so worded as apparently to express a universal obligatory rule of conduct. Such enactments, however, may in view of their purpose and spirit be prqperly construed as intended to apply only to ordinary situations and to be subject to the qualification that the conduct prohibited thereby is not wrongful if, because of an emergency or the like, the circumstances justify an apparent disobedience to the letter of the enactment. Thus, the statutory prohibition against parking an automobile on the traveled part of a highway is not applicable to one which has broken down and is incapable of motion and thus remains on the highway while the driver is diligently seeking assistance to remove it. The provisions of statutes, intended to codify and supplement the rules of conduct which are established by a course of judicial decision or by custom, are often construed as subject to the same limitations and exceptions as the rules which they supersede. Thus, a statute or ordinance requiring all persons to drive on the right side of the road may be construed as subject to an exception permitting travellers to drive upon the other side, if so doing is likely to prevent rather than cause the accidents which it is the purpose of the statute or ordinance to prevent.” (Restatement, Torts, § 286, comment (c); see Johnson v. Griffith, 19 Cal.2d 176,180 [120 P.2d 6]; Mathers v. County of Riverside, 22 Cal. 2d 781, 785 [151 P.2d 419] ; Umemoto v. McDonald, 6 Cal.2d 587, 590 [58 P.2d 1274]; Dewhirst v. Leopold, 194 Cal. 424, 431 [229 P. 30]; Berhovitz v. American River Gravel Co., 191 Cal. 195, 199 [215 P. 675]; Gragg v. Los Angeles Trust Co., 154 Cal. 663, 667 [98 P. 1063, 16 Ann.Cas. 1061]; Fietz v. Hubbard, 59 Cal.App.2d 124, 128 [138 P.2d 315] ; Prescott v. City of Orange, 56 Cal.App.2d 144, 148 [132 P.2d 523]; Morris v. Purity Sausage Co., 2 Cal.App.2d 536, 540 [38 P.2d 193]; Fouch v. Werner, 99 Cal.App. 557, 564 [279 P. 183]; Dugan v. Fry, 34 F.2d 723; Long v. Steffen, 194 Wis. 179 [215 N.W. 892, 61 A.L.R. 1155]; 24 A.L.R. 1304; 63 A.L.R. 277.) Thus “if some good excuse appears, which would be a sufficient defense to an action for the penalty imposed by the ' law . . . then the law is not really violated.” (Berhovitz v. *599American River Gravel Co., 191 Cal. 195, 199 [215 P. 675].) “A classic illustration of the same general principle is the Bologna ordinance against blood-letting in the streets, which did not make criminals of surgeons.” (Edgerton, J., in Ross v. Hartman, 139 F.2d 14, 16; 78 App.D.C. 217; 158 A.L.R. 1370.) A similar exception is expressly formulated in the Navigation Rules as follows: “In obeying and construing these rules due regard shall be had to all dangers of navigation and collision, and to any special circumstances which may render a departure from the above rules necessary in order to avoid immediate danger.” (33 U.S.C.A., § 212, art. 27.) “The duty is imperative to observe the rules, and to assume that an approaching vessel will do likewise, until after the danger has become so manifest as to show that there is no proper choice of judgment other than that of departing from the rules. Any other course would lead to confusion and be a most prolific source of accidents.” (The Piankatank, 87 F.2d 806, 810; Intagliata v. Shipowners etc. Co., 26 Cal.2d 365, 377 [159 P.2d 1].)
A statute regulating traffic must be reasonably construed not only by limiting its effect to the situations envisaged when it was enacted, but also by reading such- provisions in conjunction with one another and with the rules of the common law supplementing them. Thus, provisions governing the right of way at an intersection, by their very nature, apply only to part of the conduct of each operator of a vehicle. The safety of operators who meet at an intersection depends also on the conduct of each of them before he reaches the critical juncture. An operator who approaches the intersection at an improper rate of speed, or suddenly increases his speed before he reaches the intersection, may be at fault even though he is first at the intersection and therefore under the letter of the statute entitled to cross it. (Lindenbaum v. Barbour, 213 Cal. 277, 281 [2 P.2d 161] ; Stevenson v. Fleming, 47 Cal.App.2d 225 [117 P.2d 717]; Groat v. Walkup Drayage etc. Co., 14 Cal.App.2d 350, 355 [58 P.2d 200] ; see 136 A.L.R. 1497, 89 A.L.R. 838.) Again, an operator who reaches the intersection first after he has properly approached it may be at fault if he proceeds blindly in disregard of danger that is obvious. (Donat v. Dillon, 192 Cal. 426, 429 [221 P. 193]; Enz v. Johns, 112 Cal.App. 1, 5 [296 P. 115]; Blackmore v. Brennan, 43 Cal.App.2d 280, 287 [110 P.2d 723]; see 2 Cal. *600Jur. Ten-Year Supp. 341.) Since the duty of each operator to observe the right of way rules is imperative, one who arrives at an intersection first may assume that the operator of another vehicle will obey the rules. (Leblanc v. Coverdale, 213 Cal. 654, 657 [3 P.2d 312]; Page v. Mazzei, 213 Cal. 644, 645 [3 P.2d 11]; Ebert v. Tide Water Assoc. Oil Co., 54 Cal. App.2d 497, 501 [129 P.2d 135] ; Avalos v. Grimale, 30 Cal. App.2d 725, 728 [87 P.2d 392]; Couchman v. Snelling, 111 Cal.App. 192,195 [295 P. 845]; see 2 Cal.Jur. Ten-Year Supp. 338.) One’s right to assume that the other will obey the rules .ceases only when the circumstances make it manifest that the other cannot or does not intend to obey the law; even then the one having the right of way is not at fault unless by yielding the right of way, stopping his vehicle, or taking other action, a collision could be avoided.
The issues in the present case related to the approach of each operator to the intersetcction and his conduct at the intersection. The bus driver testified that the bus was approximately 195 feet from' the intersection when he first observed plaintiff’s car, which was then approximately 300 feet from the intersection; that he was travelling at approximately 30-35 miles per hour and that plaintiff was travelling at about 45 miles per hour; that he realized that the two vehicles would reach the intersection at approximately the same time if he did not change his speed but that he expected that the plaintiff, coming from the left, would reduce his speed. Plaintiff testified that he was travelling at a speed of approximately 25 miles per hour and first saw the bus when he was approximately 75 feet from the intersection and the bus was at least twice that far from the intersection. The bus driver was at fault if he raced for the intersection or if he became aware that plaintiff would not give him the right of way and if he could have avoided the collision by yielding the right of way, stopping or taking other action. Plaintiff was at fault if he approached the intersection at improper speed or observed that the bus would reach the intersection first or at the same time as he would. If the bus driver approached the intersection at a proper rate of speed and could not anticipate that plaintiff would be there first, the issue became important whether the bus driver perceived that there was a manifest danger of collision to be avoided by Ms yiélding the right of way, stopping, or taking other action to avoid the collision. In this respect his testimony, that he knew that *601a collision was inevitable when plaintiff’s car was about 40 feet from the intersection, was important. It must also have been clear to the plaintiff that the closer he came to the intersection the more he had to be certain that he did not have “worlds of time” as he allegedly thought when he first saw the bus.
The jury should have been instructed in accordance with the foregoing rules.
The trial court’s instruction, quoted in the majority opinion, did not advise the jury that the question as to who was at fault was to be determined under the right-of-way provisions, if both cars properly approached the intersection and one was there first or one car came from the right, if they both arrived at the intersection at the same time. The instruction was inadequate in not advising the jury that one cannot gain the right of way by racing for it or otherwise violating the law. The effect of the instruction was to advise the jury that the provisions of the Vehicle Code dealing with the right of way were of no consequence, and that if an ordinary prudent person under the circumstances would have violated the statute, the violation was excused. Instead of describing the scope of the statutory standard the court.rejected that standard and in its place adopted the reasonable man standard, leaving it to the jury to determine what was proper conduct under the circumstances.
In cases of this sort the choice of the wrong theory, either as a basis of instruction to the jury or as a rule of decision for the trial court sitting without a jury, may have serious consequences. Any doctrine that allows uncontrolled discretion in the jury or trial court to disregard statutory standards cannot fail to bring about a similar disregard of the standards by those whose conduct is regulated.