Trzcinski v. Richey

• Decision Date: 07 June 1983
• Citation: 460 A.2d 1269,190 Conn. 285
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: Edward R. TRZCINSKI v. Janet RICHEY et al.

Page 1269

460 A.2d 1269

190 Conn. 285

Edward R. TRZCINSKI v. Janet RICHEY et al.

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued March 5, 1983.

Decided June 7, 1983.

Herbert Watstein, Bristol, for appellant (plaintiff).

Elaine J. Kraucunas, Hartford, with whom, on the brief, was Snow Gene Munford, Hartford, for appellees (defendants).

Before PETERS, HEALEY, PARSKEY, SHEA and GRILLO, JJ.

GRILLO, Justice.

The plaintiff brought this action to recover for personal injuries sustained in a collision allegedly resulting from the negligent operation of a motor vehicle by the defendant Janet Richey. ¹ The defendants denied their negligence and raised the plaintiff's contributory negligence as a special defense. The jury returned a general verdict for the defendants. The plaintiff filed a motion to set aside the verdict, which the trial court, D. Dorsey, J., denied. Accordingly, judgment was rendered for the defendants, from which judgment the plaintiff appeals.

The plaintiff presents the following issues on appeal: (1) Whether the trial court erred in its charge to the jury regarding proximate causation; (2) Whether the trial court erred in admitting the testimony of an expert witness in response to a hypothetical question; and (3) Whether the trial court erred in denying the motion to set aside the verdict.

The jury could reasonably have found the following facts: On November 11, 1977, at approximately 6 p.m., the plaintiff was driving his automobile in a northerly direction on Flanders Road in Southington. Flanders Road runs in a general north-south direction and is a main road. At the same time the defendant, Janet Richey, (hereinafter the defendant) was operating her automobile in an easterly direction on Pattonwood Drive, also in Southington. Pattonwood Drive runs in a general east-west direction and is a minor road. There is a stop sign at the easterly end of Pattonwood Drive, where it intersects Flanders Road in a "T" intersection.

Upon reaching this intersection, the defendant stopped at the stop sign, and subsequently executed a right turn in order to proceed along Flanders Road in a southerly direction. During the course of this turn, a collision occurred between the plaintiff's and the defendant's vehicles. The left front fender area of the defendant's car struck the left side of the plaintiff's vehicle in the area of the driver's door, causing damage to both vehicles. At the time of the collision it was dark, clear and the roadways were dry. The posted speed limit on Flanders Road was twenty-five miles per hour.

The plaintiff testified that as he was proceeding along Flanders Road in the right or northbound lane, he first saw the defendant's vehicle coming out of Pattonwood Drive when he was approximately 150 feet from the intersection. He stated that he was travelling at approximately twenty-five miles per hour. As the gap between the vehicles lessened, he realized that the turning vehicle was encroaching on his side of the highway, and he attempted to "squeeze" to the right to avoid being hit. At no time prior to the accident did he apply his brakes. ² The collision flung him to the right, away from the steering wheel, and when he reassumed his driving position he found his car partially over the center line in the southbound lane of Flanders Road and angling toward the side of the southbound lane. As the plaintiff looked up, he saw the headlights of another vehicle proceeding southbound and toward him on Flanders Road. To avoid a head-on collision with this vehicle, the plaintiff testified that he swerved further left onto a lawn, where the front end of his car struck a group of three trees prior to coming to a stop.

The defendant testified as follows: Upon coming to a stop at the stop sign, she looked right, (the direction from which the plaintiff's car was approaching) saw nothing, ³ looked left, saw a car approximately four to five hundred feet away, and proceeded to execute her right turn. She estimated her speed at under five miles per hour. She was halfway into the turn, at a forty-five degree angle, when the collision occurred. She did not see the plaintiff's vehicle until impact, and denied encroaching upon the northbound lane of Flanders Road while making her turn into the southbound lane. Upon viewing the plaintiff's car proceed off the road and into the trees, after the collision the defendant estimated its speed as between forty and forty-five miles per hour.

An independent witness, the driver of the car proceeding south on Flanders Road which was north of the intersection at the time of the collision, viewed the entire incident. She testified that she saw the defendant's vehicle "creeping very slowly" onto Flanders Road, and she estimated that upon impact the defendant's car was a foot to a foot and one-half across the center line into the northbound lane. The witness was unable to estimate the speed of the plaintiff's vehicle at the trial, and did not remember estimating its speed to the investigators who contacted her after the accident. On cross-examination, however, in response to defense counsel's query concerning her statement, made to an investigator, that the plaintiff was travelling at forty-five miles per hour, the witness responded, "[i]f I said 45, then that's what I felt it was then, but I just don't recollect."

The defendant's son, a rear seat passenger in the defendant's vehicle at the time of the accident, ⁴ saw the plaintiff's car prior to impact and estimated its speed as greater than thirty miles per hour and as an "excessive rate of speed." In his opinion his mother did not at any time while making her turn cross the center line of Flanders Road. On cross-examination, he admitted to signing a statement concerning the events of the accident which read " '[i]f [the defendant's] car was over the center line it wasn't by much.' "

The investigating police officer, who arrived at the scene shortly after the accident, testified that in his opinion the collision occurred in the northbound lane of Flanders Road. He reached this conclusion based on a patch of dirt, which the officer attributed to the collision. The patch was approximately five feet in length and in the area of the center line of Flanders Road. The majority of this dirt was in the northbound lane, although some of the dirt was in the southbound lane as well.

The final witness to testify at the trial was the defendant's expert, a consulting automotive engineer. Defense counsel, after showing the witness photographs of the parties' vehicles which revealed the damages to each car, proceeded to ask a hypothetical question. Instructing the witness to assume that the plaintiff's vehicle was proceeding north on Flanders Road, and that the defendant's vehicle was proceeding to make a right hand turn onto Flanders Road from Pattonwood Drive, and that the two cars came together somewhere on Flanders Road near the center line, which resulted in the damages to each vehicle as shown in the photographs, defense counsel asked the witness his opinion concerning the nature or character of the collision which occurred between the two automobiles. A series of objections by the plaintiff's counsel concerning an improper foundation for the hypothetical question followed, to which defense counsel responded by asking the witness to assume the additional factors which formed the basis of the plaintiff's objections. ⁵ Ultimately, the court permitted the witness to respond to the question over counsel's objection. ⁶

The expert witness testified that in his opinion the impact was "a side scraping action on the side of the [plaintiff's vehicle] across the left front fender tip end of the [defendant's vehicle]." He described the damage to the defendant's vehicle as "superficial," and characterized the side damage to the plaintiff's vehicle (discounting the damages applicable to the frontal collision with the trees) as resulting from the kind of impact that would cause "the car to rock on its suspension just away from that side. It would not cause the wheels to lose tracks with the road. There's not that much energy in the collision to cause it to go out of control." Moreover, in the expert's opinion, upon impact the plaintiff would move toward the point of collision, in this case to his left against the window or driver's door of the vehicle.

On appeal, the plaintiff first assigns as error the trial court's charge to the jury regarding proximate causation. ⁷ In presenting this argument, the defendant relies primarily on Mahoney v. Beatman, 110 Conn. 184, 147 A. 762 (1929), asserting that the trial court's charge overrules the precedent established in that case. Citing Mahoney, the plaintiff contends that if the jury were to conclude that the plaintiff was in the northbound lane at all times, and that the defendant encroached into the northbound lane, thereby violating General Statutes § 14-230, ⁸ and there was a collision that the speed of the plaintiff's vehicle could not be a substantial factor in causing the accident. It is his position that the court's failure so to charge constitutes error. We do not agree.

In Mahoney v. Beatman, the plaintiff was driving at an unreasonable rate of speed when the defendant's car, traveling in the opposite direction, swerved onto the wrong side of the road, resulting in a collision between the two vehicles. Id., 186-87, 147 A. 762. The trial court, as the trier of fact, specifically found that the collision was caused solely by the negligence of the defendant, a conclusion unchallenged upon appeal. Id., 187-88, 147 A. 762. At issue before this court was whether, after the collision, the unreasonable speed of the plaintiff constituted an "intervening agency" sufficient to exhaust the negligent act of the defendant and thus become, itself, the substantial factor causing the plaintiff's injuries. Id., 198-99, 147 A. 762. Under the circumstances presented, we held that the plaintiff's...