Galindo v. TMT Transport, Inc.

• Decision Date: 25 September 1986
• Docket Number: CA-CIV,No. 2,2
• Citation: 733 P.2d 631,152 Ariz. 434
• Parties: Juanita C. GALINDO, mother of Jose Galindo, deceased, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. TMT TRANSPORT, INC., an Arizona corporation, and Salvatore G. Robles and Jane Doe Robles, Defendants/Appellees. 5731.
• Court: Arizona Court of Appeals

Page 631

733 P.2d 631

152 Ariz. 434

Juanita C. GALINDO, mother of Jose Galindo, deceased, Plaintiff/Appellant, v. TMT TRANSPORT, INC., an Arizona corporation, and Salvatore G. Robles and Jane Doe Robles, Defendants/Appellees.

No. 2 CA-CIV 5731.

Court of Appeals of Arizona Division 2, Department B.

Sept. 25, 1986.

Reconsideration Denied Nov. 3, 1986.

Review Denied Feb. 21, 1987.

Raineri & Raineri by Joseph C. Raineri, Sr., Scottsdale, for plaintiff/appellant.

Stinson & Douglas by Warren R. Brown, Phoenix, for defendants/appellees.

OPINION

LACAGNINA, Judge.

Juanita C. Galindo appeals from a judgment in favor of TMT Transportation, Inc. and Salvatore G. Robles denying her damages for the wrongful death of her adult son, Jose Galindo, a pedestrian struck by a truck on Interstate 10 on January 5, 1982. She claims that the trial court erroneously refused her offered instructions advising the jury that if her son's mental condition prevented him from realizing the consequences of his acts or caring for his own safety, he was not contributorily negligent and that because of his deranged intellect, he was not contributorily negligent as a matter of law. She also argues the court erroneously submitted the issues of negligence, contributory negligence and assumption of risk to the jury with the standard approved Arizona instructions. She claims that because of her son's mental condition, his conduct is judged by a different standard of care. She also contends that because of this condition, there was insufficient evidence of his contributory negligence or assumption of risk to allow the jury to consider those issues.

We must decide whether in a negligence action a mentally deficient person is charged with an objective standard of care of a reasonable person under the circumstances or some other subjective standard which would exempt a person from tort liability and responsibility because he is mentally deficient.

We affirm the judgment of the trial court based on the jury verdict and hold that in a negligence action a mentally ill or insane person is held to the same standard of care as an ordinarily careful person under the circumstances.

FACTS

We recite the evidence in the light most favorable to upholding the jury verdict. Meyer v. Ricklick, 99 Ariz. 355, 409 P.2d 280 (1966), quoting Stallcup v. Coscarart, 79 Ariz. 42, 45, 282 P.2d 791, 795 (1955). Jose Galindo, who was 29 years old at the time of the accident, was on leave from and returning to the Arizona State Hospital where he had been a patient on many previous occasions. He was a passenger in a van driven by his father and occupied by his mother, Juanita. He had been diagnosed and was being treated for paranoid schizophrenia.

Robles was driving a loaded gasoline haulage truck toward Phoenix on Interstate 10. When he came off an overpass entering Interstate 10, he saw the Galindo van parked on the right shoulder of the road. As he moved to the left and passed the van without incident, he saw people in the emergency lane for southbound traffic. He saw Jose run from the emergency lane across the southbound lanes and across the median and northbound lanes. He then saw Jose turn and begin running toward the parked Galindo van. He stated that Jose then suddenly turned, ran across the slow northbound traffic lane and jumped in front of his truck in a gesture described as an attempt to tackle the truck.

The investigating officer's report, admitted in evidence, stated that Jose ran across the northbound slow lane and dove with his arms apart as though he were trying to tackle the truck into the right front fender of the truck and committed suicide. Medical experts testified that in their opinion, based upon what they had been told about the accident and Jose's medical records, Jose was in a confused and irrational state at the time he was observed running erratically onto the freeway and probably was not able to recognize his behavior as being dangerous. Jose had been committed to the Arizona State Hospital as a mental patient at least seven times, three voluntary and four court-ordered. The medical witnesses testified that 90% of the people suffering from paranoid schizophrenia are functioning in society with proper treatment and follow-up and that the goal of the Arizona State Hospital is to return a patient to society as soon as possible after treatment.

STANDARD OF CARE

Arizona recognizes only one standard of care for adults in a negligence action. That standard, as stated in Recommended Arizona Jury Instructions, Negligence Instruction 2A, approved by the Arizona Supreme Court in 1974, was the instruction given in this case. The court instructed the jury that when the conduct of both the plaintiff and defendant is in issue, "[a] person is negligent if he fails to act as an ordinarily careful person would act under the circumstances." The standard of care for both negligence and contributory negligence is the same. McGriff v. McGriff, 114 Ariz. 323, 560 P.2d 1230 (1977).

In an attempt to describe the reasonable person standard, Prosser and Keeton state:

The whole theory of negligence presupposes some uniform standard of behavior. Yet the infinite variety of situations which may arise makes it impossible to fix definite rules in advance for all conceivable human conduct. The utmost that can be done is to devise something in the nature of a formula, the application of which in each particular case must be left to the jury, or to the court. The standard of conduct which the community demands must be an external and objective one, rather than the individual judgment, good or bad, of the particular actor; and it must be, so far as possible, the same for all persons, since the law can have no favorites. At the same time, it must make proper allowance for the risk apparent to the actor, for his capacity to meet it, and for the circumstances under which he must act.

The courts have dealt with this very difficult problem by creating a fictitious person, who never has existed on land or sea: the 'reasonable man of ordinary prudence.'

Sometimes he is described as a reasonable person, or a person of ordinary prudence, or a person of reasonable prudence, or some other blend of reason and caution. It is evident that all such phrases are intended to mean very much the same thing.

Prosser and Keeton on The Law of Torts § 32 at 173 (W. Keeton 5th ed. 1984) (footnotes omitted). To the same effect is Restatement (Second) of Torts where the standard is stated as follows:

Unless the actor is a child, the standard of conduct to which he must conform to avoid being negligent is that of a reasonable man under like circumstances.

Restatement (Second) of Torts § 283 (1965).

Prosser and Keeton also discuss whether allowances are made in the law as exceptions to the reasonable person standard of care for those who lack full mental capacity.

As for more severe mental disabilities, including total insanity, where the actor entirely lacks the capacity to comprehend a risk or avoid an accident, one might expect a relaxation of the standard similar to the physical disability rule. Yet, for a variety of reasons, the law has developed the other way, holding the mentally deranged or insane defendant...