Lyons v. Walsh & Sons Trucking Co., Ltd.
Decision Date | 10 September 2004 |
Citation | 96 P.3d 1215,337 Or. 319 |
Parties | William R. LYONS and Barbara A. Lyons, Co-Personal Representatives of the Estate of Scott Alan Lyons, Deceased, Petitioners on Review, v. WALSH & SONS TRUCKING CO., LTD., Respondent on Review. Walsh & Sons Trucking Co., Ltd., Third-Party-Plaintiff, v. James Eugene May, Jr., Third-Party-Defendant. |
Court | Oregon Supreme Court |
Meagan A. Flynn, of Preston Bunnell & Stone, LLP, Portland, argued the cause and filed the brief for petitioners on review.
I. Franklin Hunsaker, of Bullivant Houser Bailey, PC, Portland, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review. With him on the brief were Richard J. Whittemore and Holly E. Pettit.
Helen T. Dziuba, Lake Oswego, filed the brief for amicus curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers Association.
This personal injury case arose out of a fatal automobile collision between a truck belonging to defendant Walsh & Sons Trucking (Walsh) and an Oregon State Police (OSP) vehicle. Plaintiffs are the parents and copersonal representatives of OSP Trooper Lyons, who was killed in the accident along with his colleague, OSP Sergeant Rector. Rector was driving the OSP vehicle. Plaintiffs brought a wrongful death action against Walsh. The case was tried to a jury, which returned a verdict for Walsh. Plaintiffs appealed, arguing to the Court of Appeals that the trial court had erred both in admitting certain evidence relating to Rector's fault in causing the accident and in refusing to instruct the jury in the manner that plaintiffs had requested respecting the way in which the jury could consider Rector's conduct.1 The Court of Appeals affirmed. Lyons v. Walsh Sons Trucking Co., Ltd., 183 Or.App. 76, 51 P.3d 625 (2002). We allowed plaintiffs' petition for review and now affirm, but for reasons other than those that the Court of Appeals stated.
We take our statement of the operative facts, together with the procedural history of the trial, from the opinion of the Court of Appeals:
Lyons, 183 Or.App. at 78-79, 51 P.3d 625.
The parties agreed that both Rector and his employer, OSP, were immune from liability for the accident under the "exclusive remedy" provision of the workers' compensation statutes. ORS 656.018(1)(a).2 However, the parties disagreed as to how the jury was to be informed of that fact. Plaintiffs asked the trial court to give one of three alternative instructions, the gist of each of which was that the jury should not "weigh or consider" Rector's conduct unless the jury found that the accident had been the "sole and exclusive" result of that conduct. The court declined, on grounds not relevant to our disposition of this case, to give any of the three instructions. Instead, the court instructed the jury as follows:
Plaintiffs then asked the trial court to pose a special interrogatory to the jury that asked whether the accident was caused "solely and exclusively" by Rector's conduct. The court declined to do so. What happened next is pivotal to our disposition of this case. The court submitted a special verdict form to the jury, the first question of which asked:
"Was defendant WALSH & SONS TRUCKING CO., LTD. negligent in one or more of the ways claimed by the plaintiffs and, if so, was such negligence a cause of damage to the plaintiffs?"
The jury answered "No" to that question, resulting in a verdict in favor of Walsh.
On appeal, plaintiffs assigned several errors respecting the trial court's consistent refusal to instruct the jury that it could not consider Rector's conduct unless it were to find that Rector's conduct had been the "sole and exclusive" cause of the accident. In so arguing, plaintiffs relied on former ORS 18.470 (2001), renumbered as ORS 31.600 (2003), which provides, in part:
(Emphasis added.)
The Court of Appeals rejected plaintiffs' arguments, ruling that the text of former ORS 18.470 concerned apportionment of comparative fault, not substantial factor causation:
"We * * * conclude that ORS 18.470(2) and (5) do not * * * render inadmissible evidence of an immune actor's conduct that is relevant to determining whether a defendant's conduct was a substantial factor in causing an injury."
Lyons, 183 Or.App. at 85, 51 P.3d 625. Plaintiffs' requested instructions were incorrect, the court concluded, because they were based on a contrary assumption. Id. at 85-86, 51 P.3d 625. Plaintiffs'...
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