Ryder TRS, Inc. v. Hirsch

• Decision Date: 02 March 2005
• Docket Number: No. 4D03-1426.,4D03-1426.
• Citation: 900 So.2d 608
• Parties: RYDER TRS, INC., Appellant, v. Patricia HIRSCH, Lisa Marie Ann Hesse, and College Park Texaco, Inc., Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

900 So.2d 608

RYDER TRS, INC., Appellant, v. Patricia HIRSCH, Lisa Marie Ann Hesse, and College Park Texaco, Inc., Appellees.

No. 4D03-1426.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

March 2, 2005.

Opinion Denying Rehearing, Rehearing and Certification May 11, 2005.

Jane Kreusler-Walsh of Jane Kreusler-Walsh, P.A., West Palm Beach and Roderick McGee of Ligman & Martin, P.L., Miami, for appellant.

Julie H. Littky-Rubin of Lytal, Reiter, Clark, Fountain & Williams, LLP, West Palm Beach, and Jeffrey A. Shaffer of Mintmire & Associates, Palm Beach, for appellees.

Opinion Denying Rehearing, Rehearing En Banc and Certification May 11, 2005.

MAY, J.

The defendant appeals a final judgment entered on a jury verdict in an automobile accident case. We limit our opinion to the trial court's jury instruction on conversion as it relates to the dangerous instrumentality doctrine and affirm.

Art Saxon had previously rented trucks from College Park Texaco. Rennard Sughrim, an employee of College Park Texaco, loaned Saxon a truck owned by Ryder without executing a formal written agreement. Under the informal arrangement, Saxon paid Sughrim weekly rent, but he stopped paying after several weeks. Nevertheless, Sughrim allowed Saxon to keep the vehicle. Saxon later used his mother's credit card to make some of the payments. The same card was subsequently charged another $6,000 for use of the truck without the mother's knowledge. Saxon did not have a valid driver's license.

Sughrim ultimately reported the truck "lost." The officer taking the police report testified that Sughrim wanted to locate the truck or get the money from Saxon. When Sughrim later spoke to Saxon, he was advised he would be paid the money owed.

Law enforcement contacted Saxon about the truck, advised him that it had been reported missing, and indicated that he would be arrested if he drove the truck. Saxon, in turn, told his girlfriend, Lisa Marie Hesse, that if she used the truck and got caught, she would be arrested. Six weeks after Sughrim reported the truck "lost," it was involved in an accident with the plaintiff. Saxon's girlfriend, Lisa Marie Hesse, was driving the truck at the time.

The plaintiff filed suit against Hesse and Ryder. Ryder asserted the truck had been stolen at the time of the accident. The plaintiff then amended the complaint to add Saxon and College Park Texaco. The plaintiff obtained defaults against Hesse and College Park and dismissed Saxon prior to trial.

At trial, Ryder requested a special jury instruction on conversion. Plaintiff's counsel objected. After a discussion on the issue, the trial court denied Ryder's request, and gave the jury a modified conversion instruction.

The jury found that Hesse was negligent, that her negligence caused plaintiff's damages, and that Saxon had not stolen or converted the truck at the time of the accident. The court entered a final judgment for the plaintiff.

Ryder argues a new trial is required because the conversion instruction was inaccurate and confusing. We agree that the instruction may not have been perfect, but it was neither inaccurate nor confusing. In Goldschmidt v. Holman, 571 So.2d 422 (Fla.1990), the supreme court stated the standard of review of a trial court's decision on a jury instruction:

Decisions regarding jury instructions are within the sound discretion of the trial court and should not be disturbed on appeal absent prejudicial error. Prejudicial error requiring a reversal of judgment or a new trial occurs only where "the error complained of has resulted in a miscarriage of justice." § 59.041, Fla. Stat. (1989). A "miscarriage of justice" arises where instructions are "reasonably calculated to confuse or mislead" the jury. Florida Power & Light Co. v. McCollum, 140 So.2d 569, 569 (Fla.1962).

Id. at 425.

"Under Florida's dangerous instrumentality doctrine, the owner of a motor vehicle is liable to third persons for injuries caused by the negligent operation or use of the motor vehicle by the person to whom the owner entrusted the vehicle." Dockery v. Enter. Rent-A-Car Co., 796 So.2d 593, 596 (Fla. 4th DCA 2001). "[T]o vitiate the owner's initial consent and deem the vehicle `no longer on the public highways by authority of the owner,' the vehicle must be shown to have been the subject of a theft or conversion." Id. at 599. Thus, whether the Ryder truck had been converted at the time of the accident necessarily determined the defendant's liability in this case. An accurate instruction on the issue of conversion was critical.

The defense provided the court with the following proposed special instruction on the issue of conversion:

A conversion consists of an act in derogation of the Defendants [sic] possessory rights, and any wrongful exercise or assumption of authority over another's goods by an unauthorized third party depriving the Defendant of the possession of the vehicle, permanently or for an indefinite time, is a conversion. The gist of a conversion has been declared to be not the acquisition of the property by the wrongdoer, but the wrongful deprivation of a person of property to the possession of which he is entitled.

Plaintiff's counsel objected to the special instruction. The trial court then took the initiative to craft an instruction, which read:

[T]he issue for your determination on Ryder TRS, Inc.'s defense of conversion or theft is whether prior to the accident, Ryder TRS had been wrongfully deprived of the use of [sic] possession of the vehicle permanently or for an indefinite period of time.

Plaintiff's counsel once again objected and argued the court should restrict the definition to language from this court's opinion in Dockery. The court acquiesced and gave the following instruction over defense objection:

The issue for your determination on Ryder TRS, Inc.'s defense of conversion or theft is whether at the time of the accident, Ryder TRS, Inc. had been wrongly deprived of the incidents of ownership of the vehicle.

The instruction here was not incorrect or inaccurate. At worst, the instruction was imprecise. A jury instruction might have been drafted that was better tailored to Ryder's defense. Indeed, the trial court's instruction appears to have been the better one. However, the instruction given, while perhaps imprecise, did not mislead or confuse the jury and no "miscarriage of justice occurred." In fact, each side explained "incidents of ownership" during closing argument.

We therefore affirm.

GROSS, J., concurs.

FARMER, C.J., concurs specially with opinion.

FARMER, C.J., concurring specially.

For the past four decades a number of very dedicated lawyers have labored on the Supreme Court Committee on Standard Jury Instructions (SCCSJI) in Civil cases.¹ Their only purpose has been to write jury instructions explaining the law to lay jurors clearly and understandably.

In casting standard instructions, there is a prominent view that would allow no deviation from the text of a supreme court opinion laying out the substance of the law that is the subject of the instruction. As reflected by the first version proposed by defendant Ryder in this case, the idea is that appellate opinions should be applied in the same way statutes are used—that is, with a rigid adherence to the text of the opinion and without change. And so, even if the court wrote its opinion in the language of the law schools rather than for ordinary citizens, under this theory the jury instruction must nevertheless be formed without deviation from the court opinion. It is that view that led to defendant Ryder's proposed instruction in this case.

I think that view is demonstrably untrue. Judges write appellate opinions filled with metaphor and simile. They write to illustrate and thus to clarify. They write to persuade. Their primary role, even before outcomes, is to convey legal ideas. Theirs is not to fix the permanent legal formulation of those ideas for jurors. In fact few appellate authors would be at ease with others using their prose as templates for a jury instruction.

In this case, defendant Ryder proposed that the jury be instructed thus:

"A conversion consists of an act in derogation of the defendant's possessory rights and any wrongful exercise or assumption of authority over another's good by an unauthorized third party depriving the defendant of the possession of the vehicle permanently of for an indefinite time is a conversion. The gist of a conversion has been declared to be not the acquisition of the property by the wrongdoer but the wrongful deprivation of a person of property to the possession of which he entitled."

I am not sure whether this proposal correctly states the law because I do not understand what thought it proposes to convey. I doubt that many lawyers could follow it, let alone jurors unused to legal jargon. In short, this proposed jury instruction is incomprehensible.

Having read defendant's brief I think I can say what its legal theory of defense is, and in my opinion it is wrong. Defendant argues it can avoid liability because a thief ultimately ended up with a vehicle it had entrusted to a lessee. The problem is that the law for this legal defense requires that, in order to escape liability under the dangerous instrumentality law, any theft or conversion must deprive the owner of the property. Here the defendant had previously deprived itself of the vehicle by giving it to its lessee.

The later event of a thief stealing it from the lessee is not a theft or conversion from the owner so as to absolve it under Susco. Susco Car Rental Sys. of Florida v. Leonard, 112 So.2d 832, 835-36 (Fla.1959) ("[W]hen control of ... a vehicle is voluntarily relinquished to another, only a breach of custody amounting to a species of conversion or theft will relieve an owner of responsibility for its use or misuse."). The owner had already given up possession to the lessee, so it had by then lost control to someone else. The...