Rodriguez v. Williams

• Decision Date: 26 March 2015
• Docket Number: 33,668.,33,138,No. 35,241.,35,241.
• Citation: 355 P.3d 25
• Parties: Alfredo RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Stephan WILLIAMS, Defendant–Appellant.
• Court: Court of Appeals of New Mexico

355 P.3d 25

Alfredo RODRIGUEZ, Plaintiff–Appellee

v.Stephan WILLIAMS, Defendant–Appellant.

33,138

33,668.

No. 35,241.

Court of Appeals of New Mexico.

March 26, 2015.

Certiorari Denied, June 15, 2015,

Duhigg, Cronin, Spring & Berlin, P.A., David L. Duhigg, Albuquerque, NM for Appellee.

Ripley B. Harwood, P.C., Ripley B. Harwood, Albuquerque, NM, for Appellant.

OPINION

GARCIA, Judge.

{1} Defendant Stephan Williams appeals the judgment entered by the district court against him and in favor of Plaintiff Alfredo Rodriguez after a bench trial on a personal injury claim arising from a motor vehicle accident. We affirm.

BACKGROUND

{2} In February 2012, Defendant ran a red light and struck Plaintiff's vehicle, injuring Plaintiff. At the time of the crash, Defendant's blood-alcohol content was .11, Plaintiff's blood-alcohol content was .076, and Plaintiff was not wearing a seat belt. Plaintiff was transported by ambulance to the hospital where he underwent a “craniotomy

for evacuation of [a] subdural hematoma ” and spent a total of eight days in recovery. Plaintiff's medical bills totaled $111,924.63. Plaintiff sued Defendant for damages.

{3} Plaintiff, who had been earning $9.50 per hour as an auto dealership employee, was unable to work for three months after the accident and was apparently uninsured and unable to pay his medical bills. As a result, the hospital filed a lien in the event he was awarded a judgment or received insurance proceeds. In response to the lien, Plaintiff amended his complaint to include a claim against the hospital that his medical bill was unreasonable. Plaintiff and the hospital eventually came into a settlement agreement in which the hospital agreed to accept one-third of “all monetary recovery [Plaintiff] receives arising out of or relating to the [a]ccident” in full satisfaction of his medical bill. The hospital's chief financial officer (CFO) testified at trial that Plaintiff's medical bill of $111,924.63 was reasonable and necessary for Plaintiff's care. The district court asked the CFO whether the settlement agreement would allow the hospital to recover more than what it had billed in the event one-third of Plaintiff's recovery exceeded the amount of his medical bill. The CFO replied that in her experience with this type of settlement agreement, she had never seen a case where the hospital recovered more than the billed amount, that the hospital usually receives less than what it billed, and that she believed the agreement capped the hospital's recovery at the amount of the bill. The CFO explained that the hospital typically enters into this kind of settlement agreement with an uninsured patient so that any award is evenly split between the patient, the patient's attorney, and the hospital.

{4} After a bench trial, the district court entered judgment in favor of Plaintiff. It concluded that Defendant was primarily at fault for Plaintiff's injuries and that Plaintiff was only 5% at fault due to his own alcohol impairment. The district court declined to consider the fact that Plaintiff was not wearing his seat belt in its comparative fault analysis because NMSA 1978, § 66–7–373(A) (2001) prohibits such consideration. The district court found that Plaintiff's total damages amounted to $191,864.63, which consisted of $4,940 in lost wages; $111,924.63 in medical costs; $25,000 in “[n]ature, extent and duration”; and $50,000 in pain and suffering. It subtracted 5% off of Plaintiff's total damages to account for his percentage of fault, and entered judgment against Defendant in the amount of $182,271.40.

{5} Defendant renews four arguments on appeal: (1) the unlawful acts doctrine barred Plaintiff's claims; (2) the district court should have considered the fact that Plaintiff was not wearing a seat belt in determining Plaintiff's comparative negligence; (3) Plaintiff's seat belt non-use barred operation of the collateral source rule; and (4) Plaintiff's medical damages should have been reduced to the amount that the hospital eventually agreed to accept from Plaintiff, not what it initially billed.

DISCUSSION

A. Unlawful Acts Doctrine

{6} Defendant argues that our Supreme Court's decision in Desmet v. Sublett adopted a common law rule—the “unlawful acts” doctrine—that applies in this case to preclude Plaintiff from recovering damages against Defendant because Plaintiff was unlawfully driving under the influence of alcohol at the time Defendant ran a red light and struck Plaintiff's vehicle. See 1950–NMSC–057, 54 N.M. 355, 225 P.2d 141. We disagree with Defendant's argument for several reasons.

{7} First, although the facts of this case are distinguishable, the judgment in this case is consistent with the principles that our Supreme Court applied in Desmet. There, the plaintiff bought a truck from a third party. Id. ¶ 2. The plaintiff and the third party agreed that the third party would use the truck to haul logs for hire over the public highways. Id. The defendant was a mechanic who had repaired the truck during the time that the third party owned it. Id. The third party never paid the defendant for those repairs. Id. After the plaintiff bought the truck from the third party, he authorized the third party to take it to the defendant to repair it. Id. The defendant repaired the truck, but refused to surrender the truck until he received payment for the repairs that he made when the third party owned the truck. Id. The plaintiff sued the defendant for return of the truck and for damages in the amount of income the plaintiff lost from not being able to use the truck to haul logs for hire during the year in which the defendant retained it. Id. The district court ordered the truck be returned to the plaintiff and awarded the plaintiff damages in an amount equal to the fair rental value of the truck for each day that the defendant refused to surrender it. Id. ¶¶ 2–3. The district court also found that the plaintiff had not properly registered the truck and that he did not have the required permit to operate the truck for hire over the public highways.Id. ¶ 3. Our Supreme Court upheld the order returning the truck to the plaintiff, but it reversed the damages award based on the

well settled rule of law that a person cannot maintain an action if, in order to establish his cause of action, he must rely, in whole or in part, on an illegal or immoral act or transaction to which he is a party, or where he must base his cause of action, in whole or in a part, on a violation by himself of the criminal or penal laws.

Id. ¶ 9. It recognized that the policy behind this rule is that “[n]o court will lend its aid to a man who [founded] his cause of action upon an immoral or illegal act.” Id. ¶ 11 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The Supreme Court concluded that this rule precluded the plaintiff's monetary recovery because “the plaintiff [founded] his claim for damages on the fact that he was not allowed to operate his truck on the public highways of this state in violation of its positive law.” Id. ¶ 12. In other words, the plaintiff could not recover damages on a claim of lost income when the activity that would have produced that income would have been done unlawfully. Id.

{8} Here, Plaintiff's damages claim was based on injuries he sustained when Defendant ran a red light and struck his vehicle. The district court found that a small portion of Plaintiff's injuries resulted from his own alcohol impairment, and it reduced his damages accordingly. Thus, the damages that Plaintiff actually recovered were founded solely on Defendant's negligence in running a red light and striking Plaintiff's vehicle, not on Plaintiff's unlawful act of driving impaired. In Desmet, one hundred percent of the income that the plaintiff claimed to have lost due to the defendant's conduct would have been earned in violation of New Mexico law, and the Supreme Court accordingly reduced his recovery by one hundred percent. Id. ¶ 15. Here, consistent with Desmet , Plaintiff's recovery was reduced by the portion of the damages attributed to his unlawful act.

{9} Second, Defendant urges this Court to follow the rule adopted by New York courts, one that precludes a plaintiff from recovering any damages for injuries sustained while committing an unlawful act, under certain circumstances. In particular, Defendant cites Alami v. Volkswagen of Am., Inc., 97 N.Y.2d 281, 739 N.Y.S.2d 867, 766 N.E.2d 574, 575 (N.Y.App.2002) (involving an intoxicated driver who crashed his Volkswagen Jetta into a utility pole and was killed). However, Alami does not support Defendant's argument. Id. at 578.

{10} In Alami, the driver's widow sued Volkswagen and claimed that a defect in the Jetta's design enhanced the driver's injuries. Id. at 575. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Volkswagen, dismissing the widow's damages claim because the decedent's act of driving intoxicated was a serious violation of the law that directly resulted in his injuries. Id. In reversing summary judgment, New York's highest court recognized that driving intoxicated was “indisputably a serious violation of the law.” Id. However, it concluded that the rule precluding recovery based on unlawful acts did not apply because (1) “[i]f Volkswagen did defectively design the Jetta ... it breached a duty to any driver of a Jetta involved in a crash regardless of the initial cause”; (2) the plaintiff did not “seek to profit from her husband's intoxication—she ask[ed] only that Volkswagen honor its well-recognized duty to produce a product that does not unreasonably enhance or aggravate a user's injuries”; and (3) “[t]he duty she [sought] to impose on Volkswagen originates not from her husband's act [of driving intoxicated], but from Volkswagen's obligation to design, manufacture and market a safe vehicle.” Id. at 577. In reaching this conclusion, the New York court emphasized that the unlawful acts rule “embodies a narrow application of public policy imperatives under limited...