Ryan v. Ohm, A7703-04113

• Decision Date: 30 April 1979
• Docket Number: No. A7703-04113,A7703-04113
• Parties: Danny Edward RYAN, Appellant, v. Herbert W. OHM, Respondent. ; CA 11340.
• Court: Oregon Court of Appeals

Page 1296

593 P.2d 1296

39 Or.App. 947

Danny Edward RYAN, Appellant, v. Herbert W. OHM, Respondent.

No. A7703-04113; CA 11340.

Court of Appeals of Oregon.

Argued and Submitted March 29, 1979.

Decided April 30, 1979.

R. Bruce Dusterhoff, Portland, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the brief were Day, Prohaska & Case, P. C., Portland.

Rudy R. Lachenmeier, Portland, argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent.

Before SCHWAB, C. J., and THORNTON, GILLETTE AND CAMPBELL, JJ.

CAMPBELL, Judge.

Plaintiff appeals, assigning as error the trial court's exclusion from evidence, as an admission against interest, of defendant's prior plea of guilty to a charge of Violation of the Basic Rule, ORS 487.465. ¹ The resolution of this case requires that we reconcile two seemingly contradictory statutes: ORS 41.905(2), which on its face permits the admission of the guilty plea for the purpose sought; and ORS 484.395(2), which requires the exclusion of the guilty plea. ²

ORS 41.905(2) provides:

"A plea of guilty by a person to a traffic offense may be admitted as evidence in the trial of a subsequent civil action arising out of the same accident or occurrence as an admission against the interest of the person entering the plea, and for no other purpose." ³

This statute was part of Oregon Laws 1975, ch. 542, which was a legislative response to Meyers v. Burwell, 271 Or. 84, 530 P.2d 833 (1975), and Bahler v. Fletcher,, 257 Or. 1, 474 P.2d 329 (1970). Prior to Meyers and Bahler a plea of guilty to a violation of a statute was admissible as an admission against interest in a subsequent civil proceeding. Hazard v. Salles, 222 Or. 559, 353 P.2d 548 (1960). A prior conviction of a crime, however, could not be used in a subsequent civil action to prove the facts upon which it was rendered. Jenkins v. Jenkins, 103 Or. 208, 204 P.2d 165 (1922). The rationale of this rule was that, since both parties to the civil case were not bound by the outcome of the criminal case, it was regarded as unfair to bind the convicted person by the outcome. Bahler v. Fletcher, supra, 257 Or. at 5, 474 P.2d 329. Bahler changed the rule cited in Jenkins v. Jenkins, by eliminating the necessity of mutuality in the application of the doctrine of collateral estoppel. Meyers v. Burwell involved a suit for damages arising out of a collision between the plaintiff's motorcycle and a car driven by the defendant. The defendant had previously been convicted of driving his car on the wrong side of the road. Noting the change in the law wrought by Bahler v. Fletcher, ⁴ the Oregon Supreme Court held that the defendant was collaterally estopped from denying that he drove his car on the wrong side of the road. The purpose of ORS 41.905 was to reinstate by statute the law as it was prior to Bahler v. Fletcher, and Meyers v. Burwell. ⁵

ORS 484.395(2) provides:

"Notwithstanding ORS 43.130 and 43.160, no plea, finding or proceeding upon any traffic infraction shall be used for the purpose of res judicata or collateral estoppel, Nor shall any plea, finding or proceeding upon any traffic infraction be admissible as evidence, in any civil proceeding." (Emphasis added.)

In contrast to ORS 41.905(2), which applies to traffic "offenses," this statute by its terms applies only to traffic "infractions." ORS 484.350(1) provides:

"An offense defined in the Oregon Vehicle Code is a traffic infraction if it is so designated in the statute defining the offense or if the offense is punishable only by a fine, forfeiture, suspension or revocation of a license or other privilege, or other civil penalty."

Thus, traffic "infractions" are a subgroup of the more general classification traffic "offenses." At the time of the accident giving rise to this case, the offense of Violation of the Basic Rule, to which defendant pleaded guilty, was a Class C traffic infraction. See Oregon Laws 1975, ch. 451, § 73, amended by Oregon Laws 1977, ch. 882, § 50.

The legislative history of ORS 484.395(2) demonstrates that the legislature intended that guilty pleas to traffic infractions be excepted from the more general rule governing traffic offenses, which allows a guilty plea to be used in a subsequent civil proceeding as an admission against interest. ORS 484.395(2) was a subsection of Section 140 of Senate Bill 1, the revision of the Vehicle Code, which became Oregon Laws 1975, ch. 451. At a March 5, 1975 hearing on Senate Bill 1 before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the following discussion occurred.

"Section 140. (Mr. DeWinter speaking) 'Jeff Barlow, our legal intern who has been working with me, did some research on this section and if you look at 5B on page 2 of the amendment, he proposes that you insert after estoppel, which is on subsection 2 and subsection 4 of Section 140, after "collateral estoppel " insert "nor shall any such plea, finding or proceeding be admissible as evidence. " The reason he is suggesting this is that the bill as worded does not preclude the use of traffic infractions in some other civil or criminal proceedings simply for evidence other than, say, collateral estoppel or res judicata. It would say that you cannot bring it in for any purposes.'

" '(Senator Carson speaking) I think that is a good proposal, particularly if you want to unclog the docket. I believe in a traffic infraction often a person goes in on a traffic infraction without a lawyer because he can't afford to hire a lawyer, and yet if that infraction may have arisen out of an accident, he can end up putting himself in a position of great jeopardy without realizing it by entering a plea, and so if every person involved in an accident first went to a lawyer and were properly advised, he would be advised, I think, to plead not guilty, guilty or not, because of the tremendous side consequences, so I think it is a good proposal, so that you should handle the criminal or the traffic infraction thing in one proceeding and let the question of culpability come out in the course of the trial specifically, without being muddied up by a prior inappropriate or unfortunate act of a defendant without advice of counsel, and for different reasons. I think it's a good amendment.' " Tape Recording, Senate Judiciary Committee, March 5, 1975, Tape 15, Side 1.

The proposed amendments, with minor non-substantive changes, were approved unanimously by the committee. Subsequently, the same committee considered Senate Bill 1011, Section 1 of which became ORS 41.905. Thus at the time it considered Senate Bill 1011, the committee had knowledge of the intent of the relevant language in Senate Bill 1. Nothing in the...