Court Opinion

ID: 9792029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:22:11.668253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:40.283085
License: Public Domain

URBIGKIT, Justice,
dissenting.
The plaintiff (appellant) was clearly free from fault when the defendant (appellee) drove off of the edge of this well graded, easily traveled county dirt road, came back onto the road and without admitted effort to stop, collided with plaintiff’s stopped vehicle which occupied its proper lane on the edge of the roadway. Comparative negligence was not an issue and the collision resulted not from an act of God, but rather from the driving of the out-of-control defendant. This accident was man caused.
After review of this extended record, I acquire no justification in trial evidence for the jury decision to deny the fault of the defendant driver. After concluding the verdict was completely unsupported on the issue of liability for the reasons expressed in my dissents in DeJulio v. Foster, 715 P.2d 182 (Wyo.1986) and Clarke v. Vandermeer, 740 P.2d 921 (Wyo.1987) as principles recognized by this court in Chrysler Corp. v. Todorovich, 580 P.2d 1123 (Wyo.1978), I would remand for retrial.1 This conclusion is consistent with a philosophy that to defend adequately the jury system, it requires effective supervision when unjustified results occur. Freshwater v. Booth, 160 W.Va. 156, 233 S.E.2d 312 (1977). See the extended defense of the jury system in Parklane Hosiery Co., Inc. v. Shore, 439 U.S. 322, 337, 99 S.Ct. 645, 654, 58 L.Ed.2d 552 (1979), Rehnquist, J., dissenting. An excellent analysis and evaluation of the “civil-jury-trial right” which considers the *886“dynamics” and “justification for power allocation within that system” is provided by Stephens, Controlling the Civil Jury: Towards a Functional Model of Justification, 76 Ky.L.J. 81, 83 (1987-88).
Here, liability for fault should have existed regardless of the obvious decision of this jury to provide no recovery to this injured driver — stopped and properly parked. I would reverse the decision of the district court to deny a new trial because the cognitive filters' applied by the jury did not provide justice. Wells v. McKenzie, 50 Wyo. 412, 62 P.2d 305 (1936); State Board of Law Examiners v. Phelan, 43 Wyo. 481, 5 P.2d 263 (1931); Kester v. Wagner, 22 Wyo. 512, 145 P. 748 (1914); Sloan v. Kramer-Orloff Co., 371 Mich. 403, 124 N.W.2d 255 (1963); Jaeger v. Mitchell, 277 Mich. 464, 269 N.W. 235 (1936). See Dubuc v. Ally, 448 N.W.2d 347 (Mich.1989). See also Adolph Coors Co. v. Rodriguez, 780 S.W.2d 477 (Tex.App.1989) (challenged legal and factual sufficiency of the evidence which required appellate court reversal of a very large and multi-faceted jury verdict).

. After a reasonable review of the record and careful examination of the exhibits, I do not question in any regard the comment made by the majority in assessing plaintiffs impeachment on the issues of extent of impact, damage, and actual injury. None of that impeachment changes the. liability facts of clear fault except as to that jury where justice may be reached only through a curious cognitive filter. See Moore, Trial by Schema: Cognitive Filters in the Courtroom, 37 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 273 (1987). That author suggests his testing in mock civil trials shows "[t]he most consistent and surprising result is that the students seem to ignore much of the evidence in the case when reaching their verdicts.” Id. at 273. In analysis, he explains the processes in thinking which determine opinions and conclusions which are not necessarily related to the "real facts.”