Loui v. Oakley
| Decision Date | 01 March 1968 |
| Docket Number | No. 4568,4568 |
| Citation | 438 P.2d 393,50 Haw. 260 |
| Parties | , 50 Haw. 272 Dr. Florence Chinn LOUI, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Patricia OAKLEY, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Hawaii Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court
1. Where the plaintiff was injured by several alleged tort-feasors in accidents occurring months and years apart, it was error for the trial court to instruct the jury that if it could not apportion the damages by a preponderance of the evidence it could hold the first alleged tort-feasor liable for the total damages.
2. Where the jury is unable to determine by a preponderance of the evidence how much of the plaintiff's damages can be attributed to the defendant's negligence, it should make a rough apportionment.
3. Where the jury is unable to make a rough apportionment, it should divide the damages equally among all the accidents regardless of the possibility that the plaintiff may, for any reason, be barred from recovering from one or more of the alleged tort-feasors.
Willson C. Moore, Jr., Honolulu (Henshaw, Conroy & Hamilton, Honolulu, of counsel), for appellant.
Wallace S. Fujiyama, Honolulu (Chung, Vitousek, Chuck & Fujiyama, Honolulu, of counsel), for respondent.
Before RICHARDSON, C. J., and MIZUHA, MARUMOTO, ABE and LEVINSON, JJ.
This case presents the novel question whether a plaintiff injured in a series of automobile accidents, occurring months and years apart, may recover from the first tort-feasor damages resulting from all the accidents if the jury is unable, by a preponderance of the evidence, to apportion the damages among the various accidents.
The accident for which the defendant-appellant was responsible occurred on August 4, 1961. Before this case went to trial, the plaintiff-appellee was involved in three additional accidents on February 11, 1962, November 16, 1962, and January 4, 1965. Most of the injuries she sustained in the second, third, and fourth accidents involved the same area of her body injured in the first accident.
The only issue contested at the trial was the amount of damages caused by the defendant's negligence. The trial court instructed the jury as follows: the plaintiff has the burden of proving her claim by a preponderance of the evidence; the defendant is responsible for all natural and probable results flowing from the first accident; if the jury finds that the plaintiff's injuries and damages from all four accidents are separable or divisible it must determine what portion resulted from the first accident for which, alone, the defendant would be liable; if the jury finds from a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant's negligent acts concurred in causing indivisible injuries, she is liable for all such injuries; if the jury finds that the injuries sustained after the second, third, and fourth accidents were proximately caused by the first accident, and that the injuries are indivisible, the defendant is liable for the damages resulting from all four accidents; and if the defendant increased the plaintiff's susceptibility to injury, the defendant is liable for subsequent injury if the increased susceptibility concurred in or contributed to the subsequent injury. The court read an additional instruction relating to divisibility, reiterating the points set out above. The jury found the defendant liable for $60,000 general damages and $16,194 special damages.
The defendant alleges several errors, but they all involve the identical issue: whether a tort-feasor may be held liable for subsequent injuries to the same area of the body which he injured if the injured party is unable to prove by a preponderance of the evidence precisely how much of the injuries the tort-feasor caused. We hold that the trial court erred in instructing the jury that the defendant would be liable for all the damages from all four accidents if the jury could not determine by a preponderance of the evidence how much resulted from the first accident.
Determining the extent of damages for which the defendant should answer is not a question of causality in the strict sense but rather a question of policy. 1 We realize that many courts purport to resolve the question of the extent of damages for which a defendant will be held liable by reference to various standards clothed in the raiments of causality. But we do not believe that the proper resolution of the conflicting interests involved in this case is facilitated by invoking the talismanic term 'proximate cause'. It is no less true today than it was 63 years ago when Mr. Justice Holmes concluded:
General propositions do not decide concrete cases. The decision will depend on a judgment or intuition more subtle than any articulate major premise. Lochner v. State of New York, 198 U.S. 45, 76, 25 S.Ct. 539, 547, 49 L.Ed. 937 (1905) (dissenting).
This is not to deny that there is a rather vague overall frame of reference which limits the outermost region of damages assignable to a particular accident. It is simply a recognition that resolution of the competing interests involved in this case depends more on an examination of '(t)he felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy,' than on a label used to justify a result. Holmes, The Common Law 1 (1881).
Each party advocates an extreme position. On the one hand, the plaintiff urges us to adopt a rule which permits the first in a series of defendants to be charged with the entire loss the plaintiff sustained as the result of accidents, spaced months and even years apart, where the plaintiff is unable to prove the amount of the damages attributable solely to the first defendant. Under that theory, adopted by the trial court, a plaintiff is required to prove only the total damages from all the accidents and that apportionment is impossible. As the plaintiff's attorney acknowledged in oral argument, the adoption of such a theory could result in multiple suits and nultiple recoveries. On the other hand, the defendant advocates a rule denying a plaintiff any relief unless the plaintiff can establish by a preponderance of the evidence the precise damages attributable to the defendant's negligence.
The plaintiff's approach substantially ignores the fault theory on which the law of negligence is based. 2 Under the fault theory, we are committed to the proposition that 'a law which punished conduct which would not be blameworthy in the average member of the community would be too severe for that community to bear.' Holmes, The Common Law 50 (1881). By the same token, a law requiring a person to pay damages greatly disproportionate to the injury inflicted would be contrary to the concept of fairness implicit in the fault theory. The defendant's approach
would lead to the even more unlovely spectacle of turning a plaintiff away without redress although he has shown that he has suffered some damage at the hands of each of several defendant wrongdoers and what the aggregage amount of the damages comes to. 2 Harper & James, The Law of Torts 1128 (1956).
In deciding this case, we must steer a careful course between the Scylla of denying the plaintiff any remedy and the Charybdis of imposing on one defendant all the damages, at least some of which would not have occurred without the independent acts of other persons.
We hold that the proper procedure is for the trial court to instruct the jury that if it is unable to determine by a preponderance of...
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