Court Opinion

ID: 9568933
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:08:52.676842+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:16:16.238983
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE COMPTON,
with whom CHIEF JUSTICE CARRICO joins, dissenting.
“Like presumptions, inferences are never allowed to stand against ascertained and established facts.” Ragland v. Rutledge, 234 Va. 216, 219, 361 S.E.2d 133, 135 (1987). An inference that a plaintiff contends would impose liability upon a defendant must give way to “positive, uncontradicted evidence” which exonerates the defendant from liability and which “demonstrates that the inference is based upon speculation and conjecture.” Id. And, where a plaintiff calls a defendant as an adverse witness, the plaintiff is bound by so much of the defendant’s testimony that is clear, reasonable, and uncontradicted, and not in conflict with the evidence presented by the plaintiff. Weddle v. Draper, 204 Va. 319, 322, 130 S.E.2d 462, 465 (1963).
Called as an adverse witness, the defendant testified that she was following a pickup truck when she noticed the oncoming van “come over in the truck’s lane.” The van then “went back over to the other side of the road” and “come back on my side of the road *316and sides wiped my car,” according to the defendant. The defendant testified that, at all relevant times, she was operating her vehicle within her proper lane of travel and within the speed limit. The witness Janet Nash, who had been operating her vehicle immediately behind defendant, testified that defendant never left her proper lane of travel, never passed another vehicle, and never had anyone pass her.
Confronted with this positive, uncontradicted testimony, the majority allows inferences (drawn from testimony about unidentified headlights approaching the van) to stand against ascertained, established facts about defendant’s position on the highway at the time of the accident. The majority’s footnote argument that Ragland is inapposite because defendant’s testimony “conflicted with that of the van’s passengers regarding how the accident occurred” misses the point. The crucial fact is whether defendant’s vehicle ever strayed from its proper lane, not generally “how the accident occurred.” Only by drawing inferences that are at odds with uncontroverted testimony can the defendant’s vehicle be placed in the van’s lane of travel.
As the trial court pointed out, the accident ‘ ‘was caused either by the van for some unknown reason running off the road to the right, and thereafter going out of control, or by the van being forced off the road by some other vehicle. If it was forced from the highway, it probably was the vehicle of either Doe, Lambert, or Nash that did so, but it is not shown in this record which of them it was.” Thus, any finding of a jury that the defendant was guilty of negligence proximately causing the accident necessarily must be based on conjecture and speculation.
Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment below.