Adolphus M. Sanderlin v. Gary K. Martin

373 F.2d 447, 1967 U.S. App. LEXIS 7521

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
• Decided: February 6, 1967
• Docket: 10642
• Status: Published

Opinions

J. SPENCER BELL, Circuit Judge:

L.LBE f),3 brie wvl, ,jms peals Wal vti

This is an appeal by the plaintiff in a negligence action from an adverse judgment based on a jury verdict for the defendant. Jurisdiction is based on diversity of citizenship.

On April 8, 1964, at approximately 4:50 P.M., plaintiff Sanderlin, who was driving eastwardly on Taussig Boulevard in Norfolk, Virginia, was stopped or nearly stopped in a line of traffic awaiting the change of a traffic light. Taussig Boulevard is a straight concrete road located in a business or industrial area and having a speed limit of 25 miles per hour. Defendant Martin, who was traveling behind the plaintiff and in the same direction at approximately 15 to 20 miles per hour or perhaps as much as 25 miles per hour, struck plaintiff’s car from the rear. Plaintiff alleged that as a result of the collision he suffered personal injuries exceeding $10,000.00 in amount. According to the evidence, it was raining heavily at the time of the accident. The _ defendant testified that he saw plaintiff’s car when it was approximately 30 feet ahead of him and applied his brakes, but the slippery pavement and a set of railroad tracks that traversed the highway caused him to skid into plaintiff’s automobile. The jury returned a verdict for defendant.

This appeal raises only one issue which merits consideration. Plaintiff contends that the district court erred in giving the following instruction:

“You, as jurors, are told that this case is based upon negligence and you cannot infer negligence on the part of the defendant from the mere happening of an accident. The presumption is that the defendant was free from negligence and this presumption applies at every stage of the case unless and until it is overcome by a fair preponderance of the evidence to the contrary.”

The district court, while acknowledging that the verdict was contrary to its view of what the result should have been, upheld its instruction as proper under Virginia law.

After the district court’s opinion was filed and just before this court heard oral arguments in this appeal, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals clarified Virginia law on this type of instruction in Cook v. Basnight, Va., 151 S.E.2d 408 (decided on December 5, 1966). In that ease the defendant ran through a red traffic light, striking plaintiff’s car in the intersection and injuring plaintiff. The defendant testified that when he saw the amber light, he applied his brakes, but the brakes failed, so that he was unable to stop the car in time to avoid the collision, even though he applied his emergency brake. The trial court gave the following instruction:

“The court instructs the jury: That the basis of this action is that the defendant acted in a negligent manner and that his negligence proximately caused injury to the plaintiff. This cannot be inferred from the mere happening of the accident, but on the contrary the defendant is presumed to have operated the car with due and proper care and without negligence, and this presumption remains with the defendant throughout the trial and applies at every stage thereof, and can be overcome only by a preponderance of the evidence.”

The Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, in reversing a verdict for the defendant, held this instruction to be prejudicial error. The court said:

“When the undisputed evidence showed that the defendant had run through a red traffic light, this made out a prima facie case that he was guilty of negligence. In this situation, the defendant was no longer clothed with a presumption that he had ‘operated the car with due and proper care,’ as the instruction read. ‘[T]he burden of going forward with the evidence on the issue of negligence shifted to the defendant’ (Watford v. Morse, 202 Va. 605, 607, 118 S.E.2d 681, 683), who then was required to produce evidence in explanation of why he had not stopped at the red signal light. * * * The instruction failed to tell the jury that the burden of going forward with evidence on the issue of negligence had shifted to the defendant.”

We think the case at bar is indistinguishable from Cook v. Basnight and we must therefore reverse. The district judge correctly held that plaintiff had made out a prima facie case under Virginia law. In Watford v. Morse, 202 Va. 605, 607, 118 S.E.2d 681, 683 (1961), the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals said: “[W]hen the plaintiff showed by the evidence that the car in which she was riding was struck from the rear while stopped, or nearly stopped, at a red traffic light, she made out a prima, facie case of negligence and the burden of going forward with the evidence on the issue of negligence shifted to the defendant.” The district court erred, however, in its holding that a prima facie case was not sufficient to defeat the presumption in favor of the defendant under Virginia law, as the highest court of Virginia has subsequently made clear. Under Cook v. Basnight the presumption that the defendant was free from negligence was vitiated by plaintiff’s establishing a prima facie case of negligence against defendant. If the court saw fit to instrüct the jury as to the Virginia law of presumptions, they should also have been told that since both parties had offered evidence, the issue of negligence was for their determination without the added weight of any presumption.

The judgment of the district court is reversed and the case is remanded for a new trial.

Reversed and Remanded.