Court Opinion

ID: 9788312
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:40:22.300344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:37:07.892331
License: Public Domain

LANDAU, P. J.,
concurring.
At issue in this case is the extent to which a defendant may rebut a presumption of statutory negligence. In Barnum v. Williams, 264 Or 71, 78, 504 P2d 122 (1972), the Supreme Court stated that:
“We consider the present state of the law [of negligence per se] to be that if a party is in violation of a motor vehicle statute, such a party is negligent as a matter of law unless such party introduces evidence from which the trier of fact could find that the party was acting as a reasonably prudent person under the circumstances.”
The court imposed no limitations on the sort of evidence on which a defendant may rely in rebutting the presumption of negligence; said another way, the court articulated no category of conduct that is, as a matter of law, unreasonable.
Both the lead opinion and the dissent nevertheless assert that there exist such categories of conduct that are unreasonable as a matter of law. The lead opinion asserts that an “uncompelled, deliberate” violation of a statute is such a category of conduct that is unreasonable as a matter of law. The dissent asserts that, unless a defendant can produce evidence of a “legitimate excuse,” such as a distraction or *59some other external event, the conduct is unreasonable as a matter of law.
With respect, I think that both the lead opinion and the dissent are mistaken. The creation of limits on the type of evidence that a jury can consider in determining the reasonableness of a defendant’s conduct in a negligence per se case cannot be reconciled with Barnum, which mentions no such limits. Moreover, the creation of such limits cannot be reconciled with subsequent Supreme Court case law, in particular, James v. Carnation Co., 278 Or 65, 562 P2d 1192 (1977).
In James, the plaintiff drove her automobile into the rear of the defendant’s disabled truck, which was parked in a paved area to the right of three lanes marked for normal traffic on Highway 26, without any emergency lights on. The plaintiff claimed that the defendant’s failure to turn on its emergency lights amounted to negligence per se, while the defendant claimed that the plaintiffs failure to stay in a lane of traffic constituted negligence per se. The plaintiff attempted to offer evidence—including still photos and a movie—that, at that point on the highway, motorists commonly veered from the marked lane of traffic and into the area across the fog line. The defendant objected to the admissibility of the evidence. The Supreme Court held that the evidence was admissible. The court acknowledged that, in a prior decision, it had held such evidence inadmissible, but it held that Barnum changed things:
“In Savage, Adm’x v. Palmer et al, 204 Or 257, 272, 280 P2d 982 (1955), we held that evidence showing others to have violated certain traffic control signs was not relevant to the issue of whether the defendant was liable in a negligence action because of a violation of the same traffic control signs. At the time Savage was decided, the violation of the statute was considered to be negligence per se. The violation of a safety statute now carries the presumption of negligence but the party so charged may overcome the presumption by offering evidence of reasonable conduct.”
James, 278 Or at 78. Thus, in James, the court held that a defendant may rely on evidence of custom in attempting to establish the reasonableness of its conduct, whether or not the conduct was deliberate or subject to a “legitimate excuse.”
*60In asserting that a deliberate decision to violate a traffic statute cannot be reasonable as a matter of law, the lead opinion relies on our decision in Cervantes v. Mattson, 90 Or App 574, 577, 752 P2d 1293 (1988). That is, indeed, what Cervantes says. The problem is that that decision cannot be squared with either Barnum or James and should be overruled.
In asserting that, in the absence of a “legitimate excuse,” a violation of a trafile statute is negligence as a matter of law, the dissent relies on prior decisions of this court in which legitimate excuses were held sufficient to create a jury question. To begin with, it does not follow that, because prior cases regarded certain evidence as sufficient, that evidence is necessary. Moreover, at least one of those prior cases, Torres v. Pacific Power and Light, 84 Or App 412, 734 P2d 364 (1987)—to say nothing of Barnum and James—cannot be reconciled with the dissent’s proposed rule.
In Torres, the plaintiff was injured while installing a chain link fence when he lifted a metal tension rod overhead and the rod touched an electric power source. He claimed that the defendant, his employer, was negligent per se, because the employer violated a safety rule requiring the “safety watcher” to maintain a constant watch during the installation. The employer offered evidence that the safety watcher had been distracted at the moment of the accident. It also offered evidence that, at the time the safety watcher turned away, the plaintiff was not holding anything that could contact the power source. Finally, there was evidence that the safety watcher had warned the plaintiff about the power source several times during the day. We concluded that all of that evidence—not just the distraction—was sufficient to create a jury question as to the reasonableness of the employer’s conduct. Id. at 417.
In short, Barnum imposes no qualifications on the type of evidence on which a defendant may rely in proving the reasonableness of conduct that violated a traffic statute, and I would not create any such qualifications.
In all other respects, I join the lead opinion.