State, Dept. of Transp. v. Patterson, 91-0342
| Decision Date | 26 February 1992 |
| Docket Number | No. 91-0342,91-0342 |
| Citation | 594 So.2d 830 |
| Parties | STATE of Florida, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Appellant, v. Melissa PATTERSON, Appellee. 594 So.2d 830, 17 Fla. L. Week. D563 |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Thornton J. Williams, General Counsel, and Thomas F. Capshew, Asst. Gen. Counsel, Tallahassee, and Thomas J. McCausland, Law Office of Bohdan Neswiacheny, Fort Lauderdale, for appellant.
Michael G. Kaplan, McFann, Beavers & Kaplan, P.A., Fort Lauderdale, for appellee.
This tragic bicyclist-motorist collision in or near the U.S. 1 tunnel beneath New River in Fort Lauderdale rendered appellee a quadriplegic and resulted in an action against the motorist and appellant. The jury found for appellee against the motorist and awarded damages of $9,183,000, but found in favor of appellant.
Thereafter, the trial court granted appellee's motion for new trial against appellant on three grounds. We reverse the trial court's order and remand with direction to reenter final judgment for appellant in accordance with the jury's verdict.
While we understand and appreciate the bases for the order, we conclude it was error to interfere with the jury's verdict. The trial court first determined appellant's replacing of lights in the tunnel prior to an anticipated jury view compelled a new trial. Appellee's counsel informed the trial court during the trial that the case was not a lighting case while calling appellant's actions to the court's attention. If the conduct was to brighten up the tunnel for the jury view, even with the basest motive, there was no way--at that time--or at any retrial--to reconstruct the lighting conditions of the time of the accident, which conditions were a non-issue.
The trial court's second reason involved an evidentiary decision it made during trial and now, on reflecting, considered to have been an erroneous one. Appellee objected to admission of accident reports because they were from a limited time frame only, four years, and she had requested copies of accident reports from the date of the tunnel's opening to the date of the accident. Appellant routinely destroyed prior accident reports after a certain time period. We find appellant was entitled to have the jury consider that the records it still maintained revealed no bicycle accidents in the tunnel prior to the present accident and to have the reports as a basis for an expert's opinion as to the tunnel's safety. The value of either was...
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