Callaway v. Quinn
Decision Date | 19 September 2018 |
Docket Number | A18A0866 |
Parties | CALLAWAY v. QUINN. |
Court | Georgia Court of Appeals |
John David Hadden, Edtora Travaris Jones, Atlanta, for Appellant.
Karsten Bicknese, Robert Howard Betts, Atlanta, for Appellee.
This appeal concerns two rulings in a personal injury action arising from a hit-and-run accident between a vehicle driven by plaintiff Chikena L. Callaway and a vehicle owned by defendant Michael J. Quinn. The trial court granted summary judgment to Quinn on the ground that Callaway had pointed to no evidence that Quinn was driving the vehicle at the time of the accident. We find, however, that circumstantial evidence created a genuine issue of material fact as to whether Quinn was the driver, so we reverse the summary judgment. The trial court also denied Callaway’s request to add an unknown driver, alleged by Quinn, as a John Doe defendant. In so ruling, the trial court does not appear to have determined whether the claim against the John Doe defendant related back to Callaway’s original complaint, which the trial court was required to determine because the statute of limitation had expired. We therefore vacate the ruling denying Callaway’s request to add the John Doe defendant and remand the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
Summary judgment is appropriate "if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law." OCGA § 9-11-56 (c). "We review a grant of summary judgment de novo, construing the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmovant[ ] and drawing every reasonable inference in [her] favor." Patterson v. Kevon, LLC , ––– Ga. ––––, ––––, 818 S.E.2d 575 (2018) (citation omitted).
We note that the record contains some hearsay evidence, to which Quinn did not object. We may consider that evidence in reviewing the summary judgment because Quinn did not object to it in the summary judgment proceedings. See id. at –––– n. 3, 816 S.E.2d 575 ( ). See also OCGA § 24-8-802 ().
So construed, the evidence showed that on May 22, 2015, Callaway was stopped in traffic when she was rear-ended by a man driving a pickup truck owned by Quinn. She was injured in the accident. The driver of the truck fled the scene, and the truck was later found, abandoned, in the parking lot of a business. A wrecker service impounded the truck.
The law enforcement officer investigating the accident tried unsuccessfully to contact Quinn about it; he went to Quinn’s house, but no one would answer the door although it appeared that someone was inside. The wrecker service informed Quinn that he had to contact law enforcement to have the truck released to him, but Quinn declined to do so, and he never retrieved the truck from the wrecker service even though it contained some of his personal belongings. Based on Quinn’s behavior, the investigating officer believed that Quinn was driving the truck when it struck Callaway’s car.
Quinn, however, denied driving the truck at the time of the accident. In his deposition, he testified that the truck was a "fixer-upper" that "barely ran," which he kept parked near his house on his 3/4-acre property and only drove a few times a year. Nevertheless, Quinn maintained insurance and a current tag on the truck and kept the keys to the truck lying "on a table all the time" in the house he shared with his wife. Quinn testified that he first realized the truck was missing when he got a call from the wrecker service in June, several weeks after the accident. He never reported the truck as stolen.
In his deposition, Quinn suggested that a man who stayed at his house for a few days in 2015 took the truck and crashed it into Callaway’s car. He stated that this man—who was the former boyfriend of Quinn’s wife’s sister—"disappeared" around the time of the accident. But Quinn did not know whether or not this disappearance occurred on the actual day of the accident, and he conceded that his belief that this man took the truck was mere speculation. Quinn did not know how to contact either this man or Quinn’s wife’s sister (the man’s former girlfriend).
Callaway argues on appeal that the evidence, viewed in her favor, supports an inference that Quinn was the man driving the truck at the time of the accident. Quinn responds that his denial that he was driving is direct evidence rendering any conflicting circumstantial evidence nonprobative.
Rosales , supra at 712 (2), 580 S.E.2d 662 (citation omitted).
Applying the rules set forth in Patterson and Rosales to the evidence in this case, we find that the circumstantial evidence points more strongly to—or makes more probable—the conclusion that Quinn, rather than someone else, was driving Quinn’s truck when it struck Callaway’s car. That evidence, viewed most favorably to Callaway, showed that Quinn owned the truck; Quinn was the same gender as the person seen driving the truck; Quinn never reported the truck missing; Quinn did not know when or how the truck allegedly disappeared from his house; Quinn declined to retrieve the truck from the wrecking company after learning that he needed to contact law enforcement to do so; and the investigating officer believed that Quinn was the driver. Moreover, Quinn conceded that his alternative hypothesis—that a man who briefly stayed in his house took the truck—was mere speculation.
Consequently, the circumstantial evidence that Quinn was the hit-and-run driver had ...
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