Snell v. Norwalk Yellow Cab, Inc.

• Decision Date: 04 April 2017
• Docket Number: AC 38155
• Citation: 158 A.3d 787,172 Conn.App. 38
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: Brenda SNELL v. NORWALK YELLOW CAB, INC., et al.

172 Conn.App. 38

158 A.3d 787

Brenda SNELL

v.NORWALK YELLOW CAB, INC., et al.

AC 38155

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued November 16, 2016

Officially released April 4, 2017

Adam J. Blank, for the appellant (plaintiff).

Laura Pascale Zaino, with whom, on the brief, were Kevin M. Roche, Rachel J. Fain, and Logan A. Forsey, for the appellees (named defendant et al.).

Keller, Prescott and Harper, Js.

PRESCOTT, J.

In Barry v. Quality Steel Products Inc. , 263 Conn. 424, 436–39, 820 A.2d 258 (2003), our Supreme Court abolished the use of the superseding cause doctrine in cases in which the conduct of the intervening actor was merely negligent. This appeal requires us to consider the vitality of the doctrine in circumstances in which the conduct of the intervening actor is criminally reckless. We conclude that the doctrine is alive and well in such cases.

The plaintiff, Brenda Snell, appeals from the judgment of the trial court rendered in accordance with a jury verdict in favor of the defendants, Johnley Saineval and his employer, Norwalk Yellow Cab, Inc. (Yellow Cab).¹ The plaintiff claimed that she sustained serious physical injuries when, while walking on the sidewalk, she was struck by a taxicab that had been stolen from Saineval after he negligently left it unattended in a high crime area with the keys in the ignition. The plaintiff claims on appeal that (1) the trial court improperly instructed the jury, and submitted to it an interrogatory, on the doctrine of superseding cause, which doctrine she argues was inapplicable on the basis of the evidence presented at trial; (2) even assuming that the doctrine of superseding cause was applicable, the court's instructions and interrogatories misled the jury; and (3) the trial court improperly denied the plaintiff's motion to set aside the verdict and for a new trial in which she argued that the jury's verdict was irreconcilable with the jury's interrogatory responses.

We disagree with the plaintiff that the doctrine of superseding cause is inapplicable in this case. Furthermore, we conclude that although the court's instruction and interrogatory relating to the defendants' superseding cause defense may not have been perfectly clear, they were nonetheless sufficient to properly guide the jury in reaching a verdict. We further determine that, to the extent that any error existed, it logically would have inured to the benefit of the plaintiff and, thus, was harmless. Finally, we conclude that the jury's verdict and responses to the court's interrogatories are not irreconcilable as a matter of law, and, therefore, the court properly denied the plaintiff's postjudgment motion to set aside the jury's verdict. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The jury reasonably could have found the following relevant facts, which largely are undisputed in this case. On December 3, 2009, Saineval, who was employed by Yellow Cab as a taxicab driver, was operating a taxicab owned by Yellow Cab in Norwalk. In the early evening, he drove the taxicab to Monterey Village, a housing complex located in an area of the city with significant criminal activity. Saineval parked the taxicab and went inside one of the apartments, leaving the taxicab unlocked and unattended with the keys in the ignition.²

Two teenagers, Shaquille Johnson and Deondre Bowden, who that afternoon had been consuming alcohol and smoking marijuana, noticed the parked taxicab. Although they initially intended to steal anything of value that they could find inside the unlocked taxicab, once they observed the keys in the ignition, the two teens decided to steal the taxicab and to go on a "joyride." They drove the taxicab from Norwalk to Stamford, making one brief stop in between, with each of the teens taking a turn driving the vehicle.

When they reached Stamford, they became ensnarled in traffic. At that time, Bowden was driving the taxicab. He "kind of nodded off" and rear-ended the vehicle in front of him. Bowden, who was both "tipsy" and "high," then attempted to flee the scene. In order to maneuver the taxicab around the vehicle he had struck, Bowden drove the taxicab up over the curb of the road and onto the adjoining sidewalk. In doing so, Bowden first hit a fire hydrant before striking the plaintiff with the taxicab.

The plaintiff sustained severe physical injuries, particularly to her midsection, requiring millions of dollars in medical expenditures as of the time of trial, with additional treatments and surgeries expected. After hitting the plaintiff, Bowden never attempted to stop the vehicle; he and Johnson exited the stolen taxicab while it was still moving and fled the scene on foot, returning home by train. The police later identified the teens as the individuals involved in the hit and run of the plaintiff and arrested them.³

The plaintiff initially commenced this action solely against Saineval and Yellow Cab.⁴ Johnson and Bowden were not named by the plaintiff as defendants in the civil action. Although the defendants filed an apportionment complaint against the two teens, the court later granted the plaintiff's motion to strike the apportionment complaint, agreeing with the plaintiff that apportionment was unavailable in the present case because the misconduct of the teenagers was not pleaded as mere negligence, but as reckless or intentional conduct.

See General Statutes § 52–572h(o ) ("there shall be no apportionment of liability or damages between parties liable for negligence and parties liable on any basis other than negligence including, but not limited to, intentional, wanton or reckless misconduct"); Allard v. Liberty Oil Equipment Co. , 253 Conn. 787, 801, 756 A.2d 237 (2000) (recognizing that § 52–575h [o] was enacted to expressly overrule in part Bhinder v. Sun Co. , 246 Conn. 223, 234, 717 A.2d 202 [1998], in which our Supreme Court had recognized common law extension of statutory apportionment liability for parties whose conduct was reckless, wilful and wanton).

The operative second amended complaint contains two counts relevant to the issues on appeal.⁵ Count one sounds in negligence against Saineval. According to the plaintiff, Saineval acted negligently by leaving his taxicab in an unguarded public parking lot in a high crime area with the keys in the ignition, which created the reasonably foreseeable risk that the taxicab would be stolen and that a thief would drive the taxicab in an unsafe manner and cause injury to a person or to property. Count two alleges that Yellow Cab was vicariously liable for Saineval's negligence on a theory of respondeat superior.⁶ Prior to trial, Yellow Cab conceded that it would be liable to the same extent that Saineval was found liable on count one.

In their amended answer, the defendants, by way of a special defense, raised the doctrine of superseding cause. The defendants pleaded that "[i]f the plaintiff sustained the injuries and losses as alleged in her complaint, said injuries and losses were the result of the intentional, criminal, reckless and/or negligent conduct of a third party, which intervened to break the chain of causation between [Saineval's] alleged negligence and/or carelessness and the plaintiff's alleged injuries and losses."

The matter was tried before a jury, which heard evidence over the course of several days between December 2, 2014, and December 10, 2014. Each side submitted a request to charge to the court, each of which included a proposed instruction addressing the issue of superseding cause.⁷ Throughout the trial, the court provided the parties' attorneys with drafts of its proposed jury instructions as it developed them, indicating to the attorneys that it was willing to entertain any comments or suggestions from the parties. The court conducted a number of these discussions on the record.

For example, the court initially indicated to the parties that it was not inclined to give a superseding cause instruction to the jury because, on the basis of its reading of our Supreme Court's decision in Barry v. Quality Steel Products, Inc. , supra, 263 Conn. at 424, 820 A.2d 258, superseding cause was no longer part of our tort jurisprudence except in limited circumstances, specifically, cases involving either an intervening intentional tort, act of nature, or criminal event that was unforeseeable to the defendant. The court suggested that the exception was not at issue in the present case because, under the plaintiff's theory of liability, the intervening theft of the car was entirely foreseeable.

The defendants, however, argued that the court was focusing on the wrong criminal act. They indicated that it was not necessarily the theft of the taxicab in this case that warranted an instruction on superseding cause, but the unforeseeability of the thieves' subsequent criminal conduct, namely, intentionally driving the taxicab up onto a sidewalk to evade responsibility for a rear-end collision and the ensuing criminal assault on the plaintiff. Furthermore, the defendants noted that part of the court's rationale in Barry for abandoning the doctrine of superseding cause in cases alleging that an intervening negligent act or acts contributed to a plaintiff's injuries, was that apportionment of liability between tortfeasors was permitted, which would prevent a less culpable defendant from inequitably shouldering full responsibility for injuries that resulted from multiple negligent acts. The defendants contended that, unlike Barry , this case involved intervening actions of other tortfeasors that were not merely negligent, but reckless and criminal. In such a case, the defendants argued, apportionment of liability is unavailable by statute; see General Statutes § 52–572h(o ) ; and, thus, the primary policy rationale underlying the abolishment of the doctrine of superseding cause was absent. The court indicated that it would review the case law and give the issue further consideration in light of these arguments.

On December 10, 2014, the...