Aql v. Peterson
| Decision Date | 12 May 2023 |
| Docket Number | 125,038 |
| Parties | Mazin Aql, Appellant, v. Derek Peterson and First Management, Inc, Appellees. |
| Court | Kansas Court of Appeals |
NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION
Appeal from Douglas District Court; MARK A. SIMPSON, judge.
Leah M. Mason, of Edelman &Thompson, LLC, of Kansas City Missouri, for appellant.
Samuel A. Green, of Fisher, Patterson, Sayler &Smith, L.L.P., of Topeka, for appellees.
Before ATCHESON, P.J., SCHROEDER and GARDNER, JJ.
A jury sitting in Douglas County District Court found Mazin Aql entirely at fault for injuries he suffered in a motor vehicle mishap in a parking lot on the University of Kansas campus. Accordingly, Aql recovered no damages in this personal injury action he brought against Derek Peterson and Peterson's employer First Management, Inc. On appeal, Aql contends the district court erred both in refusing to instruct the jury on the statutory duty of drivers approaching an unregulated intersection at the same time and in allowing the jury to consider whether he bore some causative fault. We find neither contention meritorious and, therefore affirm the jury's verdict and the district court's judgment against Aql based on the verdict.
In November 2017, Aql attended the University of Kansas and played on the football team. Having finished football practice about 9:15 a.m. on a weekday, he was late for his first class as he rode his moped from a large parking lot near the stadium. The parking lot has two extended lanes along one edge-the inner lane serves as the main route from the entrance, and the outer lane is the main way back to that point to exit. Multiple parallel channels extend from one side of the ingress and egress lanes and are flanked by lined parking spaces that compose the lot.
Aql was riding his moped in the outer main lane toward the parking lot exit at less than 10 m.p.h., according to his trial testimony, when he saw Peterson's pickup in one of the channels moving toward the two main lanes. Peterson worked as a landscaper for First Management and had just finished several tasks near the stadium. Peterson drove a large company pickup with landscaping equipment in the back. At the trial, Peterson testified he had done work on the KU campus for years and knew that students would regularly drive or walk through the parking lot. He told the jury he was always cautious in pulling out from one of the channels-particularly so that day because he had to look around the parked cars. According to Peterson, he saw Aql on the moped and stopped the pickup before entering the main exit lane.
Aql however, testified that the pickup had begun to pull into the exit lane. Aql told the jury he feared the moped would flip if he braked abruptly. So, Aql explained, he turned hard to the right to avoid the pickup. In the process, the moped slid over on its side, crushing Aql's foot. The injury required corrective surgery, and Aql ended his football career. The trial testimony from both Aql and Peterson leaned to the inexact about when each saw the other, the speed of the vehicles, and their relative locations.
Aql filed this action in January 2019 naming Peterson and First Management as defendants. The parties undertook discovery. The jury heard the case over three days in late October 2021. The district court instructed the jury it could consider whether Peterson was at fault for failing to keep a careful lookout, failing to yield, driving too fast, or pulling out in front of a moving vehicle and whether Aql was at fault for failing to keep a careful lookout, driving too fast, or failing to keep his moped under control. The jury returned a verdict finding Aql to be 100 percent at fault. After denying Aql's motion for a new trial, the district court entered judgment for Peterson and First Management. Aql has appealed.
On appeal, Aql replays his failed argument to the district court that statutory rules of the road-and, in particular, the rule pertaining to motor vehicles approaching an unregulated intersection-apply in the KU parking lot. And he says, in turn, the jury should have been instructed on that right-of-way rule. We, too, find the argument unpersuasive and see no error in declining to instruct the jury on the rule.
We use a four-part test to review claimed instructional errors: (1) Was the instructional issue raised and the error preserved in the district court?; (2) Was the proposed instruction legally proper?; (3) Was the proposed instruction factually appropriate, given the evidence?; and (4) Did the omission of an otherwise suitable instruction compromise the trial process in a way that undermined the adverse verdict recognizing that the requisite degree of prejudice depends upon preservation? Siruta v. Siruta, 301 Kan. 757, 771-72, 348 P.3d 549 (2015). Aql preserved the error, and we assume without deciding that an instruction of the kind he sought would be factually appropriate based on the trial testimony that the pickup and the moped essentially arrived simultaneously at the point where the channel and the main lanes meet. Legal propriety, however, is another matter.
Under K.S.A. 8-1526(a), "[w]hen two (2) vehicles approach or enter an intersection from different highways at approximately the same time, the driver of the vehicle on the left shall yield the right-of-way to the vehicle on the right." Failure to obey a statute setting out a driving rule typically amounts to negligence, and a jury may be so instructed. Estate of Belden v. Brown County, 46 Kan.App.2d 247, 275, 261 P.3d 943 (2011); Blackwell v. Gorrell, No. 114,374, 2016 WL 5012446, at *4-5 (Kan. App. 2016) (unpublished opinion); PIK Civ. 4th 121.01 (2010) (instruction informs jurors "violation" of rules of road "is negligence"). The rule of the road in K.S.A. 8-1526(a) does not apply if traffic flow is otherwise regulated by signs or signals. See K.S.A. 8-1526(b); K.S.A. 8-1528(a) (); K.S.A. 8-2008 (); see also Ellis v. Sketers, 1 Kan.App.2d 323, 327, 564 P.2d 568 (1977) (). Likewise, the rule applies only to uncontrolled intersections of "highways." So, as a necessary foundation for his argument, Aql must demonstrate that the entry and exit lanes of the parking lot, on the one hand, and the channels to the parking spaces, on the other, are "highways" for the purposes of K.S.A. 8-1526(a). If they are not, his argument for the jury instruction fails as a matter of law.
That foundational requirement turns on the proper reading of the statute and, thus, presents a question of law we review without deference to the district court. Jarvis v. Dept. of Revenue, 312 Kan.156, 159, 473 P.3d 869 (2020); State v. Turner, 293 Kan. 1085, 1086, 272 P.3d 19 (2012). Aql relies on two statutes defining "highway"-K.S.A. 8-1424 and K.S.A. 8-126(q)-and asserts either sufficiently supports his argument that the statutory right-of-way rule regulates traffic in the KU campus parking lot.
Before examining those statutes, we outline relevant principles guiding the judicial reading of statutes. Our overarching objective is to discern the legislative intent and purpose of a statute and to give effect to that intent and purpose. State v. Keys, 315 Kan. 690, 698, 510 P.3d 706 (2022); State v. James, 301 Kan. 898, 903, 349 P.3d 457 (2015). Judicial interpretation, therefore, should avoid adding something to the statutory language or negating something already there. Casco v. Armour Swift-Eckrich, 283 Kan. 508, Syl. ¶ 6, 154 P.3d 494 (2007). Words in a statute typically should be given their common or everyday meanings. Keys, 315 Kan. at 698; State v. Baumgarner, 59 Kan.App.2d 330, 335, 481 P.3d 170 (2021). Dictionaries, of course, readily furnish those usual meanings. Midwest Crane &Rigging, LLC v. Kansas Corporation Comm'n, 306 Kan. 845, 851, 397 P.3d 1205 (2017). But the Legislature sometimes crafts specific definitions, especially for terms used in a comprehensive statutory scheme, and those meanings necessarily control as to that enactment. See 306 Kan. at 851; Scalia &Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts, p. 225 (2012) ().
In the Kansas Uniform Act Regulating Traffic on Highways (the Act), of which K.S.A. 8-1526 is a part, "highway" is specifically defined as "the entire width between the boundary lines of every way publicly maintained when any part thereof is open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular travel." K.S.A. 8-1424. A highway, then, is a public "way" used for travel. But "way" is not a term defined in the Act. In this context, "way" has something of an old-time ring to it and means a through route to go from one place to another. See Webster's New World Collegiate Dictionary 1637 (5th ed. 2018) (def. 1) ("way" defined as "a means of passing from one place to another, as a road, highway, street or path"); Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 1415 (11th ed. 2003) (def. 1a) ("way" defined as "a thoroughfare for travel or transportation from place to place"). Not to put too fine a point on it, the parking lot is not a highway and does not consist of highways. The two main lanes lead into and out of the parking lot without going anywhere else; they are neither "ways" nor "highways" by common or statutory definitions respectively. The channels to the parking spaces similarly do not provide any sort of through passage and simply facilitate vehicular movement within the lot.
In short, Aql's notion the parking lot contains an...
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