Beyer v. Todd, 97-1178.

• Decision Date: 13 October 1999
• Docket Number: No. 97-1178.,97-1178.
• Citation: 601 N.W.2d 35
• Parties: Wendy C. BEYER, Appellee, v. Gregory Scott TODD and Todd's Flying Service, Inc., Appellants.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

601 N.W.2d 35

Wendy C. BEYER, Appellee, v. Gregory Scott TODD and Todd's Flying Service, Inc., Appellants.

No. 97-1178.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

October 13, 1999.

Sharon Soorholtz Greer of Cartwright, Druker & Ryden, Marshalltown, for appellants.

Frederick B. Anderson of Wiggins, Anderson & Conger, P.C., West Des Moines, for appellee.

Considered by McGIVERIN, C.J., and LARSON, NEUMAN, SNELL, and TERNUS JJ.

McGIVERIN, Chief Justice.

Plaintiff, Wendy C. Beyer, sought damages from defendants Gregory Scott Todd and Todd's Flying Service, Inc., for injuries she sustained in a multi-vehicle accident. The jury returned a verdict in favor of plaintiff and defendants appeal, asserting error by the district court concerning the court's: (1) refusal to give a sudden emergency jury instruction; (2) refusal to instruct the jury that plaintiff had the burden of proving the fault of released persons; and (3) refusal to admit plaintiff's petition as evidence in the case. Upon our review, we affirm.

I. Background facts and proceedings.

On April 21, 1994, plaintiff Wendy C. Beyer was injured in a multi-vehicle accident in Ankeny, Iowa. The event triggering the accident occurred when a vehicle being driven by Christopher Gardner stalled at an intersection stoplight in a left-hand lane of a four-lane divided highway. Gardner did not get out of the car, but signaled cars to go around him. The speed limit in the area was forty-five miles per hour.

Another motorist, Lucy Comer, was traveling in the same direction and in the same lane as the Gardner vehicle, but was a few car lengths behind the Gardner vehicle. Comer was alerted to Gardner's stalled vehicle when a pickup suddenly moved from the left lane to the right lane with no warning. Upon seeing Gardner's stalled auto, Comer applied her brakes and came to a stop without hitting Gardner's vehicle.

Plaintiff Beyer was also traveling in the left-hand lane. She observed the brake lights of Comer's vehicle, applied her brakes and brought her vehicle to a stop. Beyer believed she had been traveling forty miles per hour before stopping. Beyer's vehicle was then struck from behind by a vehicle being driven by defendant Gregory Todd, and owned by defendant Todd's Flying Service, Inc. The force from the impact of the Beyer-Todd collision pushed Beyer's vehicle forward into Comer's vehicle. Beyer's vehicle also collided with a vehicle being driven by Linda Yohe who was traveling in the right-hand lane. Gregory Todd believed he was traveling between thirty-five and forty miles per hour before trying to stop.

No one required medical attention at the scene of the accident. The accident occurred at approximately 4:45 p.m. The road surface was dry, the topography of the land was fairly flat and visibility was clear. Plaintiff Beyer filed an action against Gregory Todd and Todd's Flying Service, Inc., asserting negligence claims and seeking damages for personal injuries and property damages she sustained as a result of the accident.¹ Beyer later amended her petition, adding as defendants Comer and Gardner and alleged they were also negligent.

Todd filed an answer and counterclaim against plaintiff Beyer, asserting that Beyer was negligent, and also filed a cross-claim against Comer and Gardner alleging they were negligent.

Beyer settled with defendants Comer and Gardner, and the matter proceeded to trial concerning Beyer's claims against defendant Todd and Todd's counterclaim against Beyer and his cross-claims against Comer and Gardner.

During trial, defendant Todd made an offer of proof of plaintiff Beyer's amended petition in which Beyer alleged that Comer, Gardner, and Todd were all negligent in operating their vehicles. The district court sustained Beyer's objection to Todd's offer of proof and the amended petition was not admitted into evidence. Todd also requested the court to instruct the jury that plaintiff had the burden of proving the fault of the released persons, Comer and Gardner, but the court refused. Additionally, Todd requested that the trial court give a sudden emergency instruction to the jury, but the court refused.

The jury returned verdicts in favor of plaintiff Beyer, concerning her claims against Todd. The jury found Beyer 5% at fault, defendant Todd 90% at fault, defendant Gardner 5% at fault, and fixed the total sum of $46,900 as Beyer's property and personal injury damages.²

The jury found against Todd concerning his counterclaim against Beyer. Because Todd was found 90% at fault concerning Beyer's claim, the court entered judgment in favor of plaintiff Beyer against defendant Todd in the amount of $42,210, plus interest.

Defendant Todd appeals.

II. Sudden emergency jury instruction.

Todd first contends that the district court committed reversible error by refusing to give his requested sudden emergency jury instruction.

Our review of trial court determinations concerning jury instructions is for correction of errors at law. Iowa R.App. P. 4; Sheets v. Ritt, Ritt & Ritt, Inc., 581 N.W.2d 602, 604 (Iowa 1998). "As long as a requested instruction correctly states the law, has application to the case, and is not stated elsewhere in the instructions, the court must give the requested instruction." Vaughan v. Must, Inc., 542 N.W.2d 533, 539 (Iowa 1996). Parties are entitled to have their legal theories submitted to a jury if they are supported by the pleadings and substantial evidence in the record. Sonnek v. Warren, 522 N.W.2d 45, 47 (Iowa 1994). "Evidence is substantial enough to support a requested instruction when a reasonable mind would accept it as adequate to reach a conclusion." Bride v. Heckart, 556 N.W.2d 449, 452 (Iowa 1996). Failure to give a requested jury instruction does not warrant reversal unless it results in prejudice to the party requesting the instruction. Vaughan, 542 N.W.2d at 539. A party's objections to the court's instructions must specify the matter objected to and on what grounds. Iowa R. Civ. P. 196; accord Boham v. City of Sioux City, 567 N.W.2d 431, 437 (Iowa 1997). Todd requested the court to give the following sudden emergency jury instruction:

Todd claims that if you find that he violated the law in the operation of his vehicle, he had a legal excuse for doing so because he was confronted with a sudden emergency and, therefore, is not negligent. A sudden emergency is a combination of circumstances that calls for immediate action or a sudden or unexpected occasion for action. A driver of a vehicle who, through no fault of his own, is placed in a sudden emergency, is not chargeable with negligence if the driver exercises that degree of care which a reasonably careful person would have exercised under the same or similar circumstances.³

The district court refused to give Todd's sudden emergency instruction to the jury.

We have defined a sudden emergency as follows:

(1) an unforeseen combination of circumstances which calls for immediate action; (2) a perplexing contingency or complication of circumstances; (3) a sudden or unexpected occasion for action, exigency, pressing necessity.

Weiss v. Bal, 501 N.W.2d 478, 481 (Iowa 1993) (quoting Bangs v. Keifer, 174 N.W.2d 372, 374 (Iowa 1970)). Whether a party is faced with a sudden emergency is ordinarily a question for the jury. Id. at 481. We also view the evidence in the light most favorable to the party asserting that a sudden emergency existed. Id.

Comparing this definition of a sudden emergency with the facts of this case, we conclude that the district court did not commit reversible error by refusing to give Todd's sudden emergency instruction. We first note that the weather was not a factor in causing the accident. According to the record, Comer, Beyer, and Todd were forced to quickly apply their brakes in response to a sudden stop in traffic. A sudden stop in traffic on a divided, four-lane highway, during a busy time of day, however, is not an uncommon or unforeseen event on the traveled roadways. We believe that the sudden stop in traffic which confronted Todd is more like the everyday hazard of driving through a school parking lot, see Weiss, 501 N.W.2d at 482 (district court erred by giving sudden emergency instruction; collision between pedestrian walking in high school parking lot and defendant's vehicle resulted from lack of control, excessive speed and not from an emergency independent of defendant driver's conduct), than like a deer bounding onto the road at night directly in front of a driver, see Mosell v. Estate of Marks, 526 N.W.2d 179, 182 (Iowa App.1994) (driver was confronted with an unforeseen, exigent combination of circumstances when deer bounded onto road at night directly in front of driver and driver was thus confronted with a sudden emergency; district court therefore erred by its failure to submit a sudden emergency instruction), or a couch falling from a pickup truck onto the freeway without warning. See Reener v. Hill & Williams Bros., Inc., 502 N.W.2d 26, 29 (Iowa App. 1993) (applying Tennessee law, substantial evidence existed to justify submitting a sudden emergency instruction to jury where traffic on freeway was moving steadily at highway speeds and it was impossible to change lanes quickly when couch fell from pickup onto freeway).

Thus, while Todd was forced to take immediate action in response to the vehicles stopping in front of him, we believe such an event does not qualify as an emergency for purposes of submitting a sudden emergency jury instruction to the jury. See Myhaver v. Knutson, 189 Ariz. 286, 942 P.2d 445, 450 (1997) (sudden emergency jury instruction should be confined to cases where the emergency is not of the routine sort produced by the impending accident but arises from events the driver could not be expected to anticipate; trial court properly submitted sudden emergency instruction to jury where defendant driver swerved across center line into path of oncoming traffic to avoid head-on collision with vehicle...