Collins v. Thomas

• Decision Date: 24 August 2007
• Docket Number: No. 05-536.,05-536.
• Parties: Sally A. COLLINS, Administratrix of the Estate of David Collins and Individually, Chuck Collins and Amanda Collins v. Nathan THOMAS and Bradford Garland.
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

938 A.2d 1208

2007 VT 92

Sally A. COLLINS, Administratrix of the Estate of David Collins and Individually, Chuck Collins and Amanda Collins v. Nathan THOMAS and Bradford Garland.

No. 05-536.

Supreme Court of Vermont.

August 24, 2007.

John P. Wesley, J.

Jesse M. Corum, IV of Gale, Corum, Mabie, Cook & Prodan, Brattleboro, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Robin Ober Cooley of Pierson Wadhams Quinn Yates & Coffrin, Burlington, for Defendant-Appellee Garland.

Present: REIBER, C.J., DOOLEY, JOHNSON and SKOGLUND, JJ., and DAVENPORT, Supr. J., Specially Assigned.

DOOLEY, J.

¶ 1. This is a wrongful death action on behalf of David Collins, who died tragically at age twenty after falling from the back of a pickup truck driven by his friend, defendant Bradford Garland. Plaintiffs, the estate of Collins, his parents, and sister, appeal an order of the superior court finding defendant not liable as a matter of law and granting him summary judgment. Plaintiffs contend that: (1) but for defendant's negligence in driving an uninspected, defective vehicle, the accident would not have occurred, and, alternatively, (2) defendant failed to exercise reasonable care given Collins' intoxication and, but for defendant's conduct, Collins would not have fallen to his death. We affirm.

¶ 2. The undisputed facts are as follows.¹ On a late summer evening in 2001, Collins attended a party outside of the home of his friend, Nathan Thomas. At the party were Thomas and his girlfriend, defendant and his girlfriend Daisy Bills, and Harold Smith.² Collins and Thomas were drinking; defendant and Bills were not. After a few hours, Collins and Thomas planned to leave on their motorcycles in search of another party. Defendant offered to drive Collins and Thomas, who were, according to plaintiffs, "noticeably intoxicated." Defendant's car was too small to accommodate everyone, and so several members of the group rode in Thomas' pickup truck. While defendant drove, Bills rode in the passenger seat of the cab, and Collins, Thomas, and Smith rode unrestrained in the bed of the truck.

¶ 3. Defendant drove at an appropriate speed, and there was no evidence that he swerved or made any other unusual or erratic maneuvers during the ill-fated trip. At one point, Thomas passed an unlit cigarette to defendant, asking defendant to light it for him. It is unclear whether Thomas passed the cigarette though the sliding window in the back of the cab or through the driver-side window. Collins then passed an unlit cigarette to Bills. According to plaintiffs, Collins stood up, kneeled on the toolbox in the truck bed, and leaned over the edge of the truck with one hand on the roof and one hand extended through the passenger-side window. Collins shouted for Bills to light his cigarette and, according to Bills, she was not able to immediately retrieve the lighter from defendant, prompting Collins to again shout into the window for his cigarette. Thomas stated in his deposition that he told Collins to "get down" from the toolbox, but Collins replied that he had grown up sitting on the toolbox in the back of his father's truck and that Thomas should not worry. Almost immediately thereafter, Collins lost his balance and fell under the truck's rear passenger-side tire. Thomas yelled and banged on the roof to alert defendant, who stopped the truck and ran to where his friend had fallen. It is not clear Collins ever regained consciousness after the fall; he died in the hospital hours later.

¶ 4. Further, for purposes of summary judgment, defendant does not dispute the fact that the truck was in poor repair and not legally inspected at the time of the incident. Specifically, it had only an expired New Hampshire inspection sticker and would not have passed inspection in Vermont due to insufficient tread on the tires, a defective front light, a crack in the windshield, a broken rear right shock absorber, and a faulty rear right brake cylinder.

¶ 5. Plaintiffs brought suit claiming defendant was negligent in driving the defective, uninspected truck, and that he was negligent in allowing Collins, whom he knew to be intoxicated, to move about the bed of the truck as he did. The trial court granted defendant's motion for summary judgment, concluding that, as a matter of law, there was no causal connection between the truck's defects and Collins' death. The court further agreed with defendant that "there is no common-law duty on the part of a sober driver to protect an intoxicated passenger from the consequences of the intoxicated passenger's own actions, and that the imposition of such a duty would be inconsistent with the social policy favoring the use of designated drivers." Plaintiffs appealed.

¶ 6. We review an award of summary judgment de novo, construing all doubts and inferences in favor of the nonmoving party. In re Mayo Health Care, Inc., 2003 VT 69, ¶ 3, 175 Vt. 605, 830 A.2d 129 (mem.). The inquiry is familiar: whether there are any genuine issues of material fact and whether, in their absence, either party deserves judgment as a matter of law. Id.; V.R.C.P. 56(c)(3). We conclude summary judgment was proper in this case and address each of plaintiffs' arguments to the contrary in turn.

¶ 7. First, we consider defendant's liability for Collins' death because of driving a defective, uninspected truck. This claim suffers from an elemental flaw—lack of proximate causation. To be sure, the police report cites the various deficiencies of the truck described above. Thus, plaintiffs make much of the fact that defendant drove the truck in violation of 23 V.S.A. § 1222, which prohibits the operation of a motor vehicle without a valid inspection sticker. While not claiming negligence per se, plaintiffs contend that defendant's violation of § 1222 creates a rebuttable presumption of his negligence. See, e.g., Dalmer v. State, 174 Vt. 157, 164, 811 A.2d 1214, 1221 (2002) (rejecting notion that violation of a safety statute is negligence per se); Bacon v. Lascelles, 165 Vt. 214, 222, 678 A.2d 902, 907 (1996) (explaining that proof of violation of a safety statute creates a prima facie case of negligence which is only a rebuttable presumption).

¶ 8. Liability for negligence, however, requires not only a breach of a duty of care but also evidence that defendant's unreasonable conduct caused the plaintiff's harm. See, e.g., Rivers v. State, 133 Vt. 11, 13, 328 A.2d 398, 399 (1974). Specifically, causation requires both "but-for" and proximate causation. See Wilkins v. Lamoille County Mental Health Servs., Inc., 2005 VT 121, ¶¶ 13-14, 179 Vt. 107, 889 A.2d 245. Thus, the plaintiff must first show that the harm would not have occurred "but for" the defendant's conduct such that the "tortious conduct [was] a necessary condition for the occurrence of the plaintiff's harm." Id. ¶ 13. The plaintiff must also show that the defendant's negligence was "legally sufficient to result in liability," Black's Law Dictionary 234 (8th ed.2004) (defining proximate cause), such that "liability attaches for all the injurious consequences that flow [from the defendant's negligence] until diverted by the intervention of some efficient cause that makes the injury its own." Beatty v. Dunn, 103 Vt. 340, 343, 154 A. 770, 771 (1931) (quotations and citation omitted); see also Estate of Sumner v. Dep't of Soc. & Rehab. Servs., 162 Vt. 628, 629, 649 A.2d 1034, 1036 (1994) (mem.) ("Proximate cause is the law's method of keeping the scope of liability for a defendant's negligence from extending by ever-expanding causal links."). Although proximate cause "ordinarily" is characterized as "a jury issue," it may be decided as a matter of law where "the proof is so clear that reasonable minds cannot draw different conclusions or where all reasonable minds would construe the facts and circumstances one way." Estate of Sumner, 162 Vt. at 629, 649 A.2d at 1036 (quotations and citation omitted).

¶ 9. Here, we recognize plaintiffs' argument that but for defendant's unreasonable conduct in driving the uninspected and defective truck Collins would not have died. This alone, however, does not provide a sufficient legal nexus between any defect in the truck and Collins' death. Collins' fatal fall from atop the toolbox could just as easily have occurred had the truck been in perfect repair and properly inspected. See Wilkins, 2005 VT 121 ¶ 10, 179 Vt. 107, 889 A.2d 245 (explaining that a "defendant cannot be considered a cause of the plaintiff's injury if the injury would probably have occurred without" the defendant's unreasonable conduct (internal quotations omitted)). The fall was not within the natural flow of "injurious consequences" from the truck's defects; indeed, it occurred irrespective of the defects.

¶ 10. The causation issue in this case is similar to that in Rivers. There, two individuals were killed in a car accident with a state prisoner who apparently stole a truck and drove it, while intoxicated, without any lights on. Rivers, 133 Vt. at 12, 328 A.2d at 398-99. The prisoner had been released temporarily on a weekend pass. Id. at 12, 328 A.2d at 399. The plaintiff sued the Vermont Department of Corrections, arguing that it was negligent for issuing the pass to the prisoner and that, but for the pass, the accident would not have occurred. Id. at 13, 328 A.2d at 399. We affirmed a directed verdict for the State, concluding that the weekend pass was not a proximate cause of the victims' death in light of the numerous, independent acts of the prisoner, including "intoxication, theft of a vehicle, driving without lights and without maintaining a proper lookout, and driving at an excessive rate of speed." Id. at 14, 328 A.2d at 400. Similarly here, although defendant did act negligently in operating a defective truck, defendant's conduct was not the proximate cause of plaintiff's injury, because there was no relationship between the defects and the accident.

¶ 11. We turn then to plaintiffs' claim that de...