Court Opinion

ID: 9625429
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:40:47.136983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:06:08.399087
License: Public Domain

Andersen, A.C.J.
(concurring in the result) — Only one of the special interrogatories and answers dealt with incompetency. It reads:
Interrogatory No. 7:
Were employees of defendant Evans Engine and Equipment Company, Inc. negligent in loaning one or more incompetent servants to Dorwin Trucking Company, Inc.?
Answer: Yes
Only one of the trial court's instructions instructed on incompetency. It reads:
If you find that Evans Engine and Equipment Company, Inc. knew, or should have known, that its employee, Mr. Tilden, [the backhoe operator,] was incompetent to do the job at hand so as to involve an unreasonable risk of harm to the property of others, you should find that Evans Engine and Equipment Company, Inc. is liable for plaintiffs damages. In deciding this issue, you should consider whether the particular undertaking is reasonably capable of safe performance by a person of normal competent [sic] and skill. If so, there is generally no negligence in using such a person unless Evans Engine and Equipment Company, Inc. had some cause to know that he was incompetent. Evans Engine and Equipment Company, Inc. is entitled to act upon the assumption that a human being whom it uses is competent, unless its employees knew, or should have known, *211that the particular person assigned to the job was incompetent, or is one of a class generally recognized as being incompetent or likely to be so.
(Italics mine.) Instruction No. 14.
The jury was instructed as to its duty:
It also is your duty to accept the law from the court, regardless of what you personally believe the law is or ought to be. You are to apply the law to the facts and in this way decide the case.
Instruction No. 2 (part).
Thus the special interrogatories given to the jury asked only for special findings and the jury was not given general verdict forms whereby it could return a general verdict either for or against Evans. Yet the jury was instructed that depending on what it determined to be the facts relating to incompetency, it should find that Evans is liable for the State's damages (instruction No. 14), was also admonished that it had a duty to follow that and other instructions (instruction No. 2), and was then given no way to find Evans liable except by answering interrogatory No. 7 in the affirmative, as it did.
In construing the jury's findings in response to the special interrogatories given to it, we have a right to consider them in connection with the pleadings, instructions and issues submitted to the jury. 9 C. Wright & A. Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 2510, at 516 (1971). So construed, the jury's affirmative response to special interrogatory No. 7 was equivalent to the jury having returned a general verdict for the State against Evans in response to its charge contained in instruction No. 14.
Interrogatory No. 3 is not inconsistent with the answer to interrogatory No. 7 as Evans argues. The jury by its response to interrogatory No. 3 found that the State's damages were not caused by the negligence of Evans' backhoe operator. That interrogatory dealt only with negligence whereas interrogatory No. 7 and instruction No. 14 dealt also with incompetency. Negligence is not synonymous with incompetency. Shielee v. Hill, 47 Wn.2d 362, 365, 287 P.2d *212479 (1955). Since interrogatories Nos. 2 and 7 deal with different subjects, the answers to them are not inconsistent. For the foregoing reason, I concur in the result.
Reconsideration denied March 8, 1979.
Review denied by Supreme Court June 1, 1979.