Rubel v. Wainwright

862 A.2d 863

86 Conn.App. 728

Abraham RUBEL v. Eleanor P. WAINWRIGHT et al.

No. 23362.

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued September 15, 2004.

Decided January 4, 2005.

Cynthia I. Crockett, Rocky Hill, for the appellant (plaintiff).

Kerry R. Callahan, with whom were Barbara A. Frederick and, on the brief, Daniel R. Canavan, Hartford, for the appellees (defendants).

LAVERY, C.J., and FLYNN and BISHOP, Js.

BISHOP, J.

The plaintiff, Abraham Rubel, appeals from the trial court's judgment rendered in favor of the defendant Eleanor P. Wainwright¹ following a jury trial. On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the court improperly (1) instructed the jury, (2) admitted certain testimony regarding the defendant's operation of her vehicle, and (3) admitted certain testimony regarding the plaintiff's speed and operation of his vehicle. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The plaintiff brought this action to recover for personal injuries sustained in a collision allegedly resulting from the defendant's negligent and reckless operation of a motor vehicle. The defendant denied having been negligent and reckless, and raised the plaintiff's comparative negligence as a special defense. After trial, the court rendered judgment in favor of the defendant in accordance with the jury's verdict.

In reaching its verdict, the jury reasonably could have found the following facts. Federal Road, in Danbury, is a two way road running north and south. Nabby Road, which runs east and west, intersects Federal Road. At that intersection, Federal Road in the southbound direction has two lanes continuing straight through the intersection and a single left turn only lane. Those lanes are all controlled by a flashing yellow traffic signal at the time of the accident at issue. Nabby Road was controlled by a flashing red signal.

On September 8, 1997, the defendant was traveling east on Nabby Road. She stopped her vehicle at the intersection with Federal Road in response to the red flashing signal. The defendant's vision of oncoming traffic from her left was obstructed when a minivan, operated by Barbara Chitester, stopped in the right southbound lane of Federal Road because of a line of traffic backed up through the intersection. Linda Vanek's vehicle was stopped behind Chitester's vehicle, further impairing the defendant's view. Chitester appeared to allow the defendant's vehicle out to turn left onto Federal Road northbound. The defendant proceeded forward slowly, inching out and continually checking the southbound lane of Federal Road for oncoming traffic. She was almost at a complete stop when the collision occurred. The plaintiff, heading south on Federal Road, swerved and braked his motorcycle, trying to avoid an accident, but nevertheless collided with the defendant's vehicle. The plaintiff was thrown from his motorcycle over the hood of the defendant's automobile, sustaining multiple bodily injuries and requiring several surgeries.

A jury trial was held on June 11, 2002. At the close of the evidence, the plaintiff amended his complaint. In count one of the amended complaint, the plaintiff alleged, inter alia, that the defendant negligently operated her vehicle at an unreasonable rate of speed in violation of the common law and General Statutes § 14-218a, negligently failed to yield the right-of-way and proceeded past a flashing red traffic control signal in violation of the common law and General Statutes §§ 14-299(c) and 14-301, and negligently failed to use due care under the circumstances. In count two, the plaintiff alleged, on the basis of the same conduct set forth in count one, that the defendant recklessly operated her vehicle in violation of General Statutes §§ 14-218a and 14-222. The plaintiff sought double or treble damages pursuant to General Statutes § 14-295. Both the plaintiff and the defendant moved for directed verdicts. The court denied those motions and submitted two sets of interrogatories² and verdict forms to the jury.

The first set of interrogatories addressed the claims of negligence asserted in count one, and the second set addressed the claims of recklessness asserted in count two of the amended complaint. In response to question one of the first set of jury interrogatories, the jury found that the plaintiff had not proven, by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant operated her vehicle negligently in one or more of the manners alleged.³ In accordance with the court's instruction, the jury did not answer the remaining questions of that set of interrogatories or the questions in the second set of interrogatories, because it had answered "no" to the first question of the first set of interrogatories. After hearing the jury's response to the first set of interrogatories, the court sent the jury back to the deliberations room to answer question four regarding the defendant's special defense of comparative negligence. Following a brief colloquy with counsel, the court recalled the jury and told the jurors that because they had found that the defendant was not negligent in any respect, it was not necessary for them to address the defendant's comparative negligence special defense. During the brief interval between being sent to deliberate and being recalled, however, the jury forewoman had inserted an answer on the interrogatory form in which she indicated that the plaintiff had been negligent.

As noted, the jury initially did not respond to the second set of interrogatories regarding the plaintiff's claim that the defendant recklessly had operated her vehicle in violation of § 14-222 and that she recklessly had operated her vehicle at an unreasonable rate of speed in violation of § 14-218a.⁴ Shortly after the court recalled the jury for the first time, it sent the jury back a second time and directed it to answer the questions set forth in the second set of interrogatories. The jury subsequently found that the defendant had not been reckless and returned a verdict in her favor. The court accepted the jury's verdict and rendered judgment in favor of the defendant. On June 28, 2002, the plaintiff filed a motion to set aside the verdict, which the court denied after a hearing on July 29, 2002. This appeal followed.

I

The plaintiff claims that the court's charge to the jury was improper in several respects. Specifically, the plaintiff claims that the court improperly (1) instructed the jury that it needed to find that the defendant had violated both §§ 14-299(c)(1) and 14-301 for the jury to find that the defendant was negligent, (2) instructed the jury that comparative negligence is a defense to recklessness, (3) instructed the jury regarding § 14-222 and the definition of recklessness, and (4) failed to instruct the jury that the speed of the plaintiff's vehicle could be considered a condition and not necessarily a cause of the collision.

"Our standard of review concerning preserved claims of improper jury instruction is well settled.... A jury instruction must be considered in its entirety, read as a whole, and judged by its total effect rather than by its individual component parts.... [T]he test of a court's charge is not whether it is as accurate upon legal principles as the opinions of a court of last resort but whether it fairly presents the case to the jury in such a way that injustice is not done to either party under the established rules of law.... As long as [the instructions] are correct in law, adapted to the issues and sufficient for the guidance of the jury... we will not view the instructions as improper.... Therefore, [o]ur standard of review on this claim is whether it is reasonably probable that the jury was misled." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Geary v. Wentworth Laboratories, Inc., 60 Conn.App. 622, 624-25, 760 A.2d 969 (2000).

A

The plaintiff first claims that the court misled the jury in charging that he was required to prove that the defendant violated both §§ 14-299(c)⁵ and 14-301(c)⁶ in order to establish that she was negligent. We disagree.

The plaintiff maintains that the defendant's obligation under §§ 14-299 and 14-301 was twofold — to stop and to yield the right-of-way. Thus, the plaintiff claims, the defendant's failure to do either of those, in and of them-selves, would constitute a violation of the statutes. The plaintiff claims, therefore, that the court's instructions to the jury that it had to find that the defendant operator both failed to stop and failed to yield the right-of-way was incorrect and constituted reversible error.

With respect to the plaintiff's claims regarding the failure to yield the right-of-way, the court initially instructed the jury that the plaintiff had alleged failure to stop and failure to yield as two distinct specifications of negligence, and the court read to the jury the two separate provisions of §§ 14-299(c) and 14-301(c).⁷ Subsequently, the court improperly inserted the word "and" in the last paragraph of that portion of the instruction. Even if the court's instructions, at that time, may have misled the jury to believe that the plaintiff was required to prove a violation of both §§ 14-299(c) and 14-301(c), any misimpression caused by the court's instruction in that regard was corrected subsequently by the court's response to a question from the jury. After the court's charge, the jury requested clarification regarding the plaintiff's theories of negligence. The jury specifically requested: "In ... jury interrogator[ies] A, number one, we would like a list of one or more of the manners that [the defendant] is alleged to have been negligent." The court then provided the jury with an additional instruction identifying each of the plaintiff's separate theories of negligence. The court's clarifying instruction stated in relevant part: "It's paragraph five of the amended complaint. The collision and resulting injuries and damages were caused by the negligence and carelessness of defendan...