Supreme Court reverses dismissal of $7M verdict

There was sufficient evidence to support a jury verdict finding a defendant’s negligence was a proximate cause of a car accident that injured the plaintiff, the Virginia Supreme Court has ruled.

The plaintiff, a passenger in the car that the defendant hit, sued the defendant and was awarded $7 million in damages.

The defendant driver appealed, arguing insufficiency of evidence. The Court of Appeals reversed and ordered that the case be dismissed.

“[W]hen the entire sequence of events is viewed in the light most favorable to [the plaintiff], we conclude that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s verdict in this case,” Justice Cleo E. Powell wrote for the unanimous Supreme Court. “Notably, the evidence demonstrates that [the defendant’s] vehicle struck the rear passenger side door of [the vehicle the plaintiff was riding in]. … [T]his means that ‘[m]ost of [the vehicle the plaintiff was in] had to have already crossed directly in front of [the defendant’s] vehicle in order for her to strike the rear portion of the vehicle.’”

The 12-page opinion is Al-Saray v. Furr (VLW 024-6-046).

Douglas B. Wessel of Wessel Law Offices in Reston represented the plaintiff. Saying his client was “relieved and grateful” for the Supreme Court’s ruling, Wessel declined to comment further given the ongoing proceedings.

Richmond attorney Julie S. Palmer of Harman, Claytor, Corrigan & Wellman was counsel for the defendant. She did not respond to a request for comment.

Accident in the intersection

On Nov. 10, 2014, defendant Sharon Furr’s vehicle collided with a car driven by Janaia Spurlock at the intersection of Wellington Road and Market Place Avenue.

Spurlock was traveling eastbound on Wellington, with her grandfather and plaintiff Tamara Al-Saray as passengers. She had a solid green light to make the left turn into a shopping center but was hit by the defendant as she made the turn.

The plaintiff suffered significant injuries, including a traumatic brain injury, and Spurlock’s grandfather died. The plaintiff sued the defendant for negligence.

At trial, the defendant’s deposition testimony was that she had an unobstructed view of the intersection but she denied ever seeing Spurlock’s vehicle before or after it entered the intersection.

Evidence was also introduced about the defendant’s eyesight. Her daughter testified that her mother regularly wore glasses while driving and that she would not allow her daughter (the defendant’s granddaughter) to ride with the defendant unless she was wearing glasses.

The question before the Court of Appeals was not whether the circumstantial evidence excluded all possible inferences related to causation. Under our jurisprudence, when a jury verdict is based on circumstantial evidence, ‘[i]t is not necessary that the circumstances establish negligence as the proximate cause with such certainty as to exclude every other possible conclusion.’

— Supreme Court Justice Cleo E. Powell

The defendant denied she needed glasses or that she regularly wore them while driving. She later admitted that she had not had her eyes examined until after the accident, when she was prescribed bifocals.

The jury returned a $7 million verdict for the plaintiff.

The defendant appealed, raising a number of issues including the sufficiency of the evidence. In a split decision, the Court of Appeals reversed the judgment and ordered that the case be dismissed.

The plaintiff appealed.

‘Probable certainty’

On appeal, the plaintiff argued that the Court of Appeals failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to her and improperly limited its consideration of the facts to the last four seconds before impact.

The Supreme Court agreed.

Analyzing the facts, the Court of Appeals had concluded that the evidence was circumstantial and the plaintiff’s presentation of evidence was insufficient because she failed to exclude every explanation that might exonerate the defendant as a proximate cause.

“This was error,” Powell wrote for the Supreme Court. “The question before the Court of Appeals was not whether the circumstantial evidence excluded all possible inferences related to causation. Under our jurisprudence, when a jury verdict is based on circumstantial evidence, ‘[i]t is not necessary that the circumstances establish negligence as the proximate cause with such certainty as to exclude every other possible conclusion.’”

Instead, all that was required was that the jury be satisfied with proof that leads to a conclusion with probable certainty in which absolute logical certainty is impossible, the Supreme Court explained.

“Therefore, the question that the Court of Appeals should have addressed was whether the inference that served as the basis for the jury’s verdict was reasonable in light of the evidence,” Powell said.

Sufficient evidence

Additionally, the Supreme Court could not overlook that the Court of Appeals opinion appeared to have viewed the facts in favor of the defendant and limited its analysis to a brief period of time.

“[S]uch a limited view of the facts can hardly be described as being viewed in the light most favorable to the prevailing party,” Powell wrote. “Rather, when the entire sequence of events is viewed in the light most favorable to [the plaintiff], we conclude that the evidence was sufficient to support the jury’s verdict in this case.”

The record established that approximately eight seconds before the accident, on a clear sunny day with dry conditions, Spurlock’s vehicle was at “the left boundary of the left thru lane,” proceeding into the second of the four westbound lanes – already a quarter of the way through the westbound side of the intersection.

Her vehicle was further described as “completely visible” in the intersection.

At the same point, the defendant’s vehicle was traveling at 45 mph, roughly 528 feet from the intersection. By her own admission, the defendant had several hundred feet of unobstructed view of the roadway, but she never saw Spurlock’s “completely visible” vehicle already in the intersection and she made no effort to brake or otherwise avoid the ensuing impact.

“The point of impact is also an important factor in this analysis,” Powell noted, as the defendant’s vehicle struck the rear passenger side door of Spurlock’s vehicle. “From this evidence, a jury could reasonably infer that Furr’s failure to keep a proper lookout and/or her failure to yield to Spurlock was a proximate cause of the accident. It is a reasonable inference that, had Furr been keeping a proper lookout, she would have seen Spurlock and taken some sort of evasive action. Further, given the point of impact on Spurlock’s car, it is logical to infer that any form of evasive action by Furr would have avoided the accident.”