Summary
In Vollendorf, plaintiffs were stopped at a traffic light attempting to make a right turn, when they were struck from behind and pushed into the roadway where one of the defendants, Malcolm Brown, was traveling 5-10 miles per hour over the speed limit and struck plaintiffs.
Summary of this case from Halchuck v. WilliamsOpinion
No. 01C-08-106-FSS.
Submitted: December 11, 2003.
Decision Announced: February 17, 2004. Decided: March 9, 2004.
Upon Defendant, Malcolm T. Brown, Jr.'s, Motion for Summary Judgment — GRANTED
James J. Woods, Jr., Esquire, Connolly, Bove, Lodge Hutz, LLP, 1220 market Street, P.O. Box 2207, Wilmington, Delaware, 19899-2207. Attorney for Plaintiffs.
Thomas S. Bouchelle, Esquire, Bouchelle Palmer, 131 Continental Drive, Suite 407, Newark, Delaware, 19713-4301. Attorney for Defendant Pop-A-Lock of Wilmington, Inc.
Robert J. Leoni, Esquire and Michael J. Logullo, 131 Continental Drive, Suite 206, Newark, Delaware, 19713. Attorneys for Defendant Malcom T. Brown, Sr.
Mr. Jeffrey Craig, Delaware Correctional Center, 1181 Paddock Road, Smyrna, Delaware, 19977. Pro Se Defendant.
Mr. John McMichael, 1318 Idlewood Road, Wilmington, Delaware, 19804. Pro Se Defendant.
OPINION AND ORDER
This case involves a fatal, three car collision. One plaintiff was killed and the others were injured when their car was struck from behind by one defendant, Jeffrey K. Craig, and pushed into the oncoming lane, then struck again by a car driven by Malcolm T. Brown, Jr. Because Brown was speeding, he was negligent per se. The second crash happened so quickly, however, Brown could not have avoided it. That is so, even if he had been moving within the speed limit. Thus, the open question is: Can Plaintiffs prove Brown's negligence proximately caused the second collision?
Plaintiffs concede that the collision was unavoidable when their car crossed the center line. Even if Brown had been driving at the speed limit, it was too late for evasive measures. Nonetheless, they contend that if Brown had been traveling within the speed limit before the collision began, it would have been avoided. According to Plaintiffs, they would have passed safely in front of Brown either before or after they were struck from behind. Therefore, according to Plaintiffs, Brown's speeding proximately caused the second collision.
According to Brown, even under Plaintiffs' view of the facts he is entitled summary judgment. He contends that whether his negligence proximately caused the collision must be determined as of the moment Plaintiffs crossed into his lane, and not before.
I.
At 6:49 p.m., or dusk, on March 6, 2000, Stephen Vollendorf was stopped in his automobile on southbound Lancaster Pike, with his left turn signal on, waiting to turn left onto Mitchell Road. His passengers were his daughters, Dorothy and Charlotte. As they waited for a break in the oncoming traffic, the Vollendorfs were struck from behind by Craig. Craig was driving way too fast and he was drunk. The initial collision pushed the Vollendorfs into the northbound lane. There, they were struck by Brown. He was driving five to ten miles an hour over the 45 m.p.h., posted speed limit. The second impact spun the Vollendorfs' car around completely. It finally came to rest in the southbound lane. Tragically, Charlotte died. Stephen and Dorothy were injured.
As mentioned, the fatal chain reaction was almost instantaneous. Sergeant Philip Strohm, a Delaware State Police accident reconstruction expert, has opined that Brown did not contribute at all to causing the accident. It is undisputed that even if Brown had been driving the speed limit, neither he nor the Vollendorfs had time to react and avoid colliding.
As also mentioned, Plaintiffs contend that Brown was negligent per se by speeding, which Defendant admits is true. Plaintiffs further allege that had Defendant not violated the speed limit, a wide enough gap would have formed between his car and the preceding car to have allowed the Vollendorfs to make their left turn before Craig plowed into him. Thus, according to the Vollendorfs, "but for" Brown's speeding they would have cleared the intersection and avoided being hit by Craig, or at least they would have avoided colliding with Brown.
II.
Procedurally, Plaintiffs filed a complaint on August 10, 2001. They filed an amended complaint on March 5, 2002, adding Defendant as a party. Defendant answered on April 29, 2002, and discovery between Plaintiffs and Defendant began. Eventually, Craig answered on December 20, 2002.
On July 21, 2003, Defendant moved for summary judgment. Plaintiffs responded on September 2, 2003, and oral argument was held on September 4, 2003. After redeposing Sgt. Strohm on October 8, 2003, Defendant filed a supplemental motion for summary judgment on October 22, 2003. Plaintiffs responded on December 8, 2003. The court held a second oral argument on December 11, 2003. The court announced this decision, without elaboration, at the pre-trial conference on February 17, 2004.
III.
Summary judgment is proper where there are no genuine issues of material fact, thus entitling the moving party to judgment as a matter of law. Generally, negligence issues are not susceptible of summary adjudication. But when the movant clearly establishes a lack of genuine issue of material fact, summary judgment may be rendered.
Johnson v. Bowman, 1997 WL 719354, at * 1 (Del.Super.Ct.) (citing Merrill v. Crothall-American, Inc., 606 A.2d 96, 99-100 (Del. 1992)).
Lightburn v. Delaware Power Light Company, 167 A.2d 64, 66 (Del.Super.Ct. 1960).
Id. (citation omitted).
The parties basically agree about the facts. Brown admits he was speeding and concedes negligence. Brown further concedes that if he had been driving within the speed limit before reaching the point of impact, events could have been different. Plaintiffs concede that regardless of whether Brown had been driving at the speed limit or five to ten miles per hour above it, when Craig hit the Vollendorfs their subsequent collision with Brown was unavoidable. The court, therefore, turns its attention to proximate cause. As a matter of law, can it be said that Defendant's negligence was a proximate cause of the crash?
IV.
By itself, Defendant's negligence is not enough to establish his liability. The Vollendorfs must also show a reasonable connection between Defendant's negligence and their injuries. This connection is called proximate, or legal, cause. Proximate cause has long been defined in Delaware as:
"that direct cause without which [an] accident would not have occurred." In other words, a proximate cause is one "which in natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any efficient intervening cause, produces the injury and without which the result would not have occurred."
Duphily v. Delaware Electric Cooperative, Inc., 662 A.2d 821, 829 (Del. 1995) (quoting Chudnofsky v. Edwards, 208 A.2d 516, 518 (Del. 1965), Culver v. Bennett, 588 A.2d 1094, 1097 (Del. 1991) and James v. Krause, 75 A.2d 237, 241 (Del.Super.Ct. 1950)) (emphasis and citations omitted).
Accordingly, before Brown will be held liable, the Vollendorfs must establish by a preponderance of the evidence a natural, unbroken chain of causation between Brown's speeding and the collision. They must prove that Brown's speeding was a cause of the collision and, but for Brown's speeding, the collision would not have occurred.
As presented above, the Vollendorfs concede that when their car crossed the center line into Brown's path, it was too late for him to stop or avoid them, even if he had not been speeding. At that point, the crash was inevitable. And so they tacitly recognize that at the instant Brown was confronted with the peril created by Craig's negligence, Brown's speeding was not a contributing factor to, or a proximate cause of, the collision.
But the Vollendorfs do not limit their argument about Brown's culpability to his negligence when the chain reaction began. Instead, they focus on Brown's negligence even before they were forced into his path. The Vollendorfs begin their causation analysis as they waited to turn, before Craig plowed into them. They contend that Brown became a legal cause of the accident at an ill-defined place where, if he had been driving at the speed limit, Brown and the Vollendorfs would not have arrived at the point of impact simultaneously. Thus, according to the Vollendorfs, but for Brown's speeding before Craig forced them across the center line, their eventual collision with Brown would not have occurred. And therefore, Brown, along with Craig, was a proximate cause of the accident.
Proximate cause is a legal device, a means to an end. It can be nebulous, often taking shape to fit a given case's needs. In some cases, courts see proximate cause as a function of duty. In others it relates to foreseeability. Sometimes it concerns remoteness. The various approaches are directed toward answering the question whether, considering everything, a defendant should be held accountable for his or her negligence. There are instances where a defendant's negligence is merely incidental and it does not bring about, does not cause, a plaintiff's injuries.
See W. Page Keeton, Prosser and Keeton on Torts §§ 42-3, 53 (5th ed. 1984).
In most instances, proximate cause turns on classic jury determinations such as reasonableness. So, the question about proximate cause usually must be answered by a jury. Nevertheless, in a case like this where the facts are undisputed, the court can decide whether, under the law, Brown's negligence could have amounted to a proximate cause of the Vollendorfs' damages.
Culver, 588 A.2d at 1098; Island Express v. Frederick, 171 A. 181, 187 (Del. 1934).
Any way the court looks at it, Brown's negligence is not a proximate cause of this tragedy. Brown's negligence was a factor in the abstract, but Craig actually caused the collision. The legal liability falls entirely on Craig, not Brown. The court appreciates that the final collision would not have happened if Brown had not been precisely where he was, exactly when the Vollendorfs reached the same spot. It is axiomatic that but for Brown's speeding the timing would have been different. What happened here, however, is a attributable to Craig's negligence and life's randomness, not Brown's lack of care.
In reaching its conclusion, the court emphasizes the proximate cause requirement's theoretical underpinning. As Brown approached what would become the crash scene, he was speeding and in that way he was not exercising due care for the safety of others. Nevertheless, the risk posed by Brown's speed was not that it would make it possible for another driver's negligence, by coincidence, to push a car into his path. The risk Brown was ignoring was that he would not be able to react in time to avoid peril, no matter what the peril's cause. It is undisputed, however, that Brown's speeding was not so great that it affected his ability to avoid the peril caused by Craig's negligence. When Craig hit the Vollendorfs, events unfolded so quickly the collision was unavoidable, even if Brown had not been speeding. Thus, Brown's lack of care had no bearing on what happened and it did not cause the collision.
Furthermore, establishing a connection between the speeding and the collision requires speculation. First, the Vollendorfs cannot prove that they would have turned in front of oncoming traffic if a gap had formed. Second, the Vollendorfs assume that, had Brown slowed down, a gap of unspecified size and duration would have formed. That is speculative because if Brown had dropped back, the preceding vehicle might also have slowed, preventing the gap from forming.
Moreover, as Brown headed toward the eventual impact point, he could foresee that his speeding might cause an accident. But he could not foresee that he would hurt someone by preventing a gap in traffic from forming. Nor did he even have reason to believe that he controlled whether or not a gap would form. As he drove along, Brown also had no way of knowing whether opening or closing a gap in traffic was safer. While in hindsight it seems as if Brown's speeding made a difference, the difference was by happenstance, albeit tragic happenstance.
The final way the Vollendorfs' view of causation fails here is that it misapplies the "but for" test. The "but for" test only works as a potential limitation on liability. It is not a way to establish proximate cause. Carrying the Vollendorf's view to its logical end, virtually any negligent act associated with an injury, no matter how remote and unforeseeable, could be called the injury's cause. This is a case in point. The Vollendorfs tacitly recognize the possibility that Brown's speeding before the accident is too remote to be considered a cause of the eventual collision. That is why they posit their theory about the gap in traffic. They appreciate that the chain of causation requires a reasonable starting point. They appreciate that they cannot reasonably attribute the collision to the first moment Brown started speeding, long before the collision. And so, instead of accepting the first impact as the accident's obvious starting point, they arbitrarily declare that the last moment after which the accident was fated was the moment the chain of causation began.
As a matter of law based on the undisputed facts, the chain's starting point was the instant that Craig collided with the Vollendorfs. Whatever the Vollendorfs and Brown did or did not do before then might have factored into the chain, but those acts did not start it.
Thus, despite the enormous sympathy to which the Vollendorfs are entitled based on their horrible losses, which were inflicted on them through no fault of their own, there is no legal basis for holding Brown liable. In contrast to Craig, who truly caused the chain reaction, Brown's involvement in this tragic situation was brought about by misfortune. There is no principled basis for holding Brown liable merely because his speed moved him to a point in the highway a few moments sooner, which only by tragic coincidence made a collision possible. Viewing the evidence most favorably to the Vollendorfs, Brown's speeding appears merely incidental to the accident's actual cause. As a matter of law it did not rise to the level of a proximate cause of the accident.
V.
For the foregoing reasons, as a matter of law and without fact-finding, Malcolm T. Brown, Jr.'s motion for summary judgment is GRANTED.