Wilcox v. State, 33068
| Decision Date | 13 January 1965 |
| Docket Number | No. 33068,33068 |
| Citation | 171 So.2d 884 |
| Parties | Jean Blackmon WILCOX, Petitioner, v. STATE of Florida, Respondent. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Writ of Certiorari to District Court of Appeal, First District.
Boggs, Blalock & Holbrook, Jacksonville, and J. B. Hodges, Lake City, for petitioner.
Earl Faircloth, Atty. Gen., and James G. Mahorner, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.
This cause having been submitted to the Court on petition for writ of certiorari upon the transcript of record and briefs to review the decision of the District Court of Appeal, First District, in said cause dated 1m September 1963, 156 So.2d 571, adnt the Court having carefully examined the record and briefs in said cause and finding the jurisdictional conflict has not been made to appear, it is, thereupon,
Ordered that said petition be and the same is hereby denied.
It is so ordered.
This cause is before the court on petition for certiorari to review a decision of the District Court of Appeal, First District, affirming without opinion a verdict and judgment convicting the petitioner of the offense of manslaughter defined and denounced in Section 860.01, Fla.Stat., F.S.A., as follows:
'* * * if the death of any human being be cause by the operation of a motor vehicle by any person while intoxicated, such person shall be deemed guilty of manslaughter * * *.'
Jurisdiction of this court to review the appellate decision is invoked under the 'direct conflict' provision of Section 4, Article V, Fla.Const., F.S.A.
The facts, as shown by the record proper, are as follows: The defendant was indicted by the Grand Jury of Columbia County for manslaughter for causing the death of one William James Warren. The indictment was in two counts, the first charging her with manslaughter by culpable negligence in the operation of a motor vehicle, and the second charging her with the same offense by the operation of a motor vehicle while intoxicated. We are here concerned, however, only with the second count, since she was found guilty only on that count--thereby exonerating her of the culpable negligence charged against her in the first count of the indictment. See Smith v. State, Fla.1953, 65 So.2d 303; Day v. State, Fla.App.1963, 154 So.2d 340.
The second count of the indictment upon which she was convicted--and sentenced to a term of ten years in the state prison--charged, in substance, that defendant was driving a Mercury station wagon in an easterly direction upon a public highway; that one Joseph Mallory Crews was properly driving and operating a White tractor-trailer in the same direction; that the deceased, William James Warren, was riding and travelling in a Chevrolet panel truck in the opposite direction; and that the defendant, while intoxicated, caused the Mercury station wagon to collide with the White tractor-trailer, and thereby caused the White tractor-trailer to collide with the Chevrolet panel truck, thus inflicting upon the deceased the injuries from which he died.
As noted, defendant was tried and convicted in the Circuit Court of Columbia County of manslaughter as charged in the second count of the indictment. In the meantime, a civil action for damages arising out of the same accident had been brought in the Circuit Court of Duval County against Joseph Mallory Crews, as the driver, and Severance Truck Lines, as the owner, of the White tractor-trailer which collided with the Chevrolet panel truck. The suit was brought by the deceased's minor child, who was a passenger in the Chevrolet panel truck being driven by his father, to recover for his injuries sustained as a result of the collision with the White tractor-trailer, joined by his mother to recover her derivative damages, such as medical expense. The cause was tried and a verdict in favor of both plaintiffs was returned against both defendants by the jury--$80,000.00 being awarded to the child and $8,000.00 to the mother.
The verdict and judgment in the civil action in Duval County were entered subsequent to the verdict and judgment against the defendant in the criminal action in Columbia County, and during the pendency of her appeal to the District Court of Appeal, First District, from the judgment of conviction. She thereupon filed, through her attorney, a verified motion requesting the appellate court to relinquish jurisdiction to the trial court so that she could file in that court an 'Extraordinary Motion for New Trial'. In her petition to the appellate court, to which was attached her proposed 'Extraordinary Motion for New Trial' and the judgment in the civil action for damages entered in the Duval County Court, the facts recounted above were set out as a basis for defendant's contention that, had the vital fact of the truck driver's negligence been known at the time of the criminal trial, it would have put an entirely different light upon the question of whether the defendant's alleged driving while intoxicated had caused the death of the deceased. Her motion could have been treated as an application to apply to the trial court for a writ of error coram nobis and was adequate for that purpose. See Ex parte Welles, Fla.1951, 53 So.2d 708.
There was thus squarely presented to the appellate court the question of whether a person can lawfully be convicted of manslaughter when it affirmatively appears, from the indictment itself, that the accused did not perform the act from which the death of the deceased directly resulted, and when it is judicially determined that the person who, in effect, wielded the fatal blow (the driver of the White tractor-trailer with which the panel truck driven by the deceased collided) has committed an act or been guilty of negligence which has operated as an efficient proximate cause of the fatal accident. In denying the defendant's motion, the appellate court gave no reason therefor; its denial operates, however, as an affirmative answer to the question presented to it. This is, in our opinion, in direct conflict with the decisions of this court referred to hereafter.
The statute, Section 860.01, supra, denouncing the offense of which the defendant was found guilty requires that the death 'be caused by the operation of a motor vehicle by any person while intoxicated * * *.' (Italics supplied.) If the word 'caused' is interpreted as meaning the physical cause of the death, as distinguished from the legal responsibility for such death, then such holding of the appellate court is in direct conflict with the language of the statute itself, and with the general rules respecting homicidal acts--that is, that one may be found guilty of an unlawful homicide only if the act resulting in death is actually or constructively that of the accused. See 26 Am.Jur., Homicide, Sec. 54, p. 196. In automobile death cases, the death is constructively that of the accused where he, as the owner of the car, turns it over to an intoxicated person to drive, knowing of the intoxication of the drive, see Taylor v. State, Fla.1955, 83 So.2d 879; or turns it over to another and sits by his side while the driver operates the car in a culpably negligent manner, see Story v. United States, 57 App.D.C. 3, 16 F.2d 342, 53 A.L.R. 246, quoted with approval in the Taylor case, supra. But we have found no case, and none has been cited, where an accused has been held guilty of involuntary manslaughter arising from the operation of an automobile while intoxicated where the automobile driven by the accused, or under his control, was only remotely involved with the death of the deceased and did not actually collide with the victim or the vehicle in which the victim was riding. Cf. State v. Verrill (1921) 120 Me. 41, 112 A. 673, in which a statute making it an offense to leave the scene of an accident after 'causing' injury to another was interpreted as meaning the direct physical cause of the accident, as distinguished from the legal responsibility therefor.
But even if it be assumed, for the purpose of argument, that the Legislature intended to fasten criminal responsibility for the homicidal act denounced by Section 860.01, supra, under the rules governing civil liability for injury or death of a person, then the holding of the appellate court referred to above is in direct conflict with the well settled rule in this jurisdiction respecting the meaning of 'proximate cause'.
It has long been held by this court that the proximate cause of an injury is that cause which, in natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces the injury, and without which the result would not have occurred. Woodbury v. Tampa Water Works Co. 1909, 57 Fla. 243, 49 So. 556, 21 L.R.A.,N.S., 1034. Where an independent force or act intervenes to bring about a result that the defendant's act would not otherwise have produced, the defendant is liable only where the intervening force or act was reasonably foreseeable. Rawls v. Ziegler, Fla.1958, 107 So.2d 601. Ordinarily, no one is required to anticipate that another will be negligent, see General Telephone Company of Fla. v. Mahr, Fla.App.1963, 153 So.2d 13; and even where, in special circumstances, it could be found that the intervening negligence could reasonably have been foreseen, the question of 'foreseeability' is for the jury to determine under appropaite instruction from the court. See Savarese v. Hill, Fla.App.3d 1961, 128 So.2d 775; cf. Railway Express Agency v. Brabham, Fla.1953, 62 So.2d 713.
In assuming jurisdiction of the petition for certiorari on the grounds noted above, it is appropriate to note that we will, at the same time, be enabled to dissipate the confusion which will, inevitably, result from the decision of the District Court of...
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