Stump v. Doe

458 S.E.2d 279, 250 Va. 57, 1995 Va. LEXIS 85
CourtSupreme Court of Virginia
DecidedJune 9, 1995
DocketRecord 941052
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 458 S.E.2d 279 (Stump v. Doe) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Virginia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Stump v. Doe, 458 S.E.2d 279, 250 Va. 57, 1995 Va. LEXIS 85 (Va. 1995).

Opinions

JUSTICE WHITING

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this wrongful death case, we decide whether the evidence is sufficient to support a jury verdict for the plaintiff. Even though the trial court set the verdict aside, we state the facts and reasonable inferences to be drawn therefrom in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, who prevailed before the jury. Griffett v. Ryan, 247 Va. 465, 467, 443 S.E.2d 149, 150 (1994). And “if there is any credible evidence in the record that supports the verdict, we must reinstate that verdict and enter judgment thereon.” Id.

While returning to Virginia from a trip to Alabama on September 28, 1986, Luther J. Garst, Jr., (Garst) was driving his Chevrolet Suburban, which was towing a 22-foot camping trailer, on Interstate Highway 81 (1-81) in Wythe County. Five passengers were seated on the three tiers of seats of the Suburban, a large station wagon. As a tractor-trailer overtook and passed [59]*59Garst, he lost control of his vehicles and they overturned in the median strip, killing Garst’s daughter, Jennifer Elaine Garst, a passenger in the Suburban.

Since the driver of the tractor-trailer did not stop at the scene, his identity and that of the tractor-trailer’s owner are unknown. Cathy Ann Garst Stump, Jennifer’s sister, qualified as administratrix of Jennifer’s estate and brought this wrongful death action against John Doe, the unknown defendant. Process was served upon Virginia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company, Garst’s motor vehicle liability carrier, and it defended this action.

Garst, a driver with over 20 years’ experience in driving vehicles pulling horse trailers and campers, testified that just prior to the accident, he had been driving at a speed between 50 to 55 miles per hour in the left lane of the two northbound lanes of 1-81. As Garst got to the bottom of a hill, he noticed a tractor-trailer “coming right fast” in the right lane, and “about the time that the tractor-trailer got to the rear of the camper, [he] felt the wind force pushing the camper.”

As Garst felt the wind force push the camper to its left, the front of the Suburban was also forced to its left. This caused both vehicles to begin “swinging.” Garst unsuccessfully tried to stop the “swinging” by turning the Suburban slightly back to the right and applying both vehicles’ brakes. Then Garst applied the trailer brakes and accelerated the Suburban, but the more corrective action he took, “the worse everything got.” Garst testified that “then, all of a sudden, everything went around, and that’s the last thing I remember.”

Mark Douglas Reynolds, a passenger in the right middle seat of the Suburban, testified that as Garst was driving the Suburban at a speed of “around 50 miles an hour” at the bottom of the hill, a tractor-trailer came by them at a speed of “about 70 miles an hour,” so close that “if I rolled the window down, I could have touched the trailer.” According to Reynolds, as the tractor-trailer was passing, the camper trailer “[immediately” started to sway, and Garst “started to follow the sway of the camper to try to gain control, because we started at that point zig-zagging back and forth through the lanes.”

Describing the further movements of the vehicles, Reynolds testified that:

[60]*60The camper jackknifed. When it jackknifed, it flipped us around in the road. The camper broke loose from the Suburban. And, at that point, we spun around in the road a few more times. . . .
We then hit the median strip. And, when we hit that, we started down the embankment straight. But, then the camper flipped over on its side, and we rolled side to top to bottom to top and rolled all the way down going back up on the other side of the hill.

Walter A. Johnson, who had made government-funded studies of the wind forces from tractor-trailers and their effects on other vehicles on the highway, qualified as an expert witness in the field of automobile and tractor-trailer aerodynamics. Johnson testified about the effect of such wind forces upon a vehicle being passed by a tractor-trailer.

According to Johnson, the front of a tractor-trailer pushes the air out of its way as it proceeds down the highway, creating a “bulging out of the wind [which] is referred to as a bow wave. It is much the same as a bow wave of a boat going through the water.” At the aft, or rear end, of the tractor-trailer, the air is sucked back in behind the vehicle. As the bow wave progresses along the side of the overtaken vehicle, the wave’s force pushes on those parts of the overtaken vehicle closest to that force, and as the rear end of the tractor-trailer passes the other vehicle, the force of the suction pulls on the parts of the overtaken vehicle closest to its force. Johnson testified that the bow wave and suction forces grow disproportionately at higher speeds and closer proximities between the vehicles.

The defendant moved to strike the plaintiffs evidence at the conclusion of her case. When that motion was overruled, the defendant presented no evidence and renewed his motion, which was again overruled. After instructions and argument, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff and the statutory beneficiaries in the total sum of $153,009.20. On defendant’s motion, the trial court set the verdict aside on the grounds that (1) the accident was not reasonably foreseeable by the defendant, and (2) the plaintiff had failed to prove that the defendant’s negligence was a proximate cause of Garst’s loss of control of his vehicles. The plaintiff appeals.

[61]*61Noting Garst’s testimony that during his trip to and from Alabama on interstate highways, he had been passed without incident at least 100 times by tractor-trailers which were traveling from 5 to 15 miles an hour faster than he was, the defendant argues that this was an “unfortunate freak accident.” Hence, the defendant concludes that he could not reasonably foresee that his operation of the tractor-trailer would cause Garst’s vehicles to be “blown off the road.” We disagree.

Contrary to the defendant’s contention, the jury was not required to find that he should have foreseen that his operation of the tractor-trailer would cause the Garst vehicles to be “blown off the road.” Here, the evidence of the defendant’s excessive speed and close proximity to the Garst vehicles, coupled with Johnson’s testimony of the effect of the wind turbulence produced thereby, made it reasonably foreseeable that this turbulence might cause Garst to lose control of his vehicles. And, in our opinion, the defendant need not have anticipated the precise consequence of Garst’s loss of control. Hence, we think that the trial court erred in holding that the defendant could not have reasonably foreseen the consequences of his conduct.

Next, we consider the defendant’s claim that, as a matter of law, his negligence was not a proximate cause of Jennifer’s death. The defendant relies primarily upon this Court’s decision in Colonial Motor Freight Line, Inc. v. Nance, 216 Va. 552, 557, 221 S.E.2d 132, 135 (1976). There, the plaintiff introduced evidence of the effect of the bow wave and suction forces of a large tractor-trailer upon overtaken vehicles similar to that in this case. The plaintiff in Nance

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Stump v. Doe
458 S.E.2d 279 (Supreme Court of Virginia, 1995)

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Bluebook (online)
458 S.E.2d 279, 250 Va. 57, 1995 Va. LEXIS 85, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/stump-v-doe-va-1995.