Rear-Ended Your Way Into a Pile-Up on I-70? Dayton Court Says Comparative Fault Applies

Published October 12, 2011 · Ohio Appeals Courts

A semi pulls onto the shoulder of eastbound I-70 near Englewood with mechanical trouble, then tries to ease back into the right lane. The car behind it stops. The semi behind that car stops. The next car, a Honda Civic, cannot. Its driver swerves left, loses control, comes back across the lane, and slams into the first truck. She is hurt, and she sues the trucking company.

For fifteen years in Montgomery County, that lawsuit would have been dismissed before a jury ever heard it. Last month, the Second District Court of Appeals changed that. In Crosby v. Radenko, 2011-Ohio-4662, decided September 16, 2011, the court overruled its own precedent, held that the truck driver who created the hazard can share responsibility for the crash, and sent the case back for trial.

The old rule: Didier v. Johns

To understand why this matters, you have to understand what the court was undoing. In a 1996 case called Didier v. Johns, the Second District held that when a trailing driver violates Ohio's assured-clear-distance statute and a non-negligent driver in between brought his vehicle to a lawful stop, the trailing driver's negligence was the sole cause of the crash as a matter of law. The earlier negligence of whoever created the hazard, in Didier, a motorist who fell asleep and crossed the center line, was treated as legally irrelevant.

Trial courts in Montgomery, Greene, Miami, Clark, Champaign, and Darke counties were bound to follow that rule. The practical effect was that in any chain-reaction crash where the plaintiff was the last car in line and had failed to stop, the case was over. It did not matter how careless the driver at the front of the line had been.

What happened in Crosby

Jessica Crosby was driving east on I-70 in daylight when she came upon the line of stopped vehicles. She could not stop behind the second semi, veered into the left lane, lost control, and collided with the Unlimited Freight tractor-trailer that had started it all by stopping in the travel lane and then attempting to re-enter. The trial court found her negligent per se for violating the assured-clear-distance rule and, applying Didier, granted summary judgment to the trucking company.

The appeals court agreed on the first point. Ohio's assured-clear-distance statute, R.C. 4511.21(A), forbids driving at a speed that will not let you stop within the distance you can see ahead. A stationary truck in your lane during daylight, with no fog or weather to conceal it, is a reasonably discernible object, and failing to stop for it is negligence per se. We explained what that means in our March post on the assured-clear-distance rule. The court also rejected her sudden-emergency argument, citing long-standing Ohio law that a car stopping ahead of you in your lane is not a sudden emergency.

Then the court did something unusual. Writing for the majority, Judge Grady said flatly: "Our rationale in Didier was flawed."

Why the court changed course

The majority identified two errors in Didier.

First, Didier misunderstood the doctrine of intervening and superseding cause. That doctrine lets an earlier wrongdoer off the hook when a later, independent act breaks the chain of causation. But under Ohio Supreme Court precedent the intervening act must itself be wrongful: another responsible party who could and should have eliminated the hazard and failed to. In Didier, the intervening act was a school bus driver stopping safely. In Crosby, it was two drivers stopping safely. A non-negligent act, the court held, does not break the chain. It leaves the question of fault between the plaintiff and the original wrongdoer to be sorted out under comparative negligence.

Second, Didier treated a finding of negligence per se as if it decided proximate cause. The Ohio Supreme Court has said otherwise: a statutory violation establishes that the driver was negligent, but whether that negligence was the sole cause, a contributing cause, or no cause at all of the crash is a separate question, and when reasonable minds could differ it belongs to the jury. We touched on this distinction last year in discussing a Dayton motorcycle verdict.

The court surveyed decisions from the Supreme Court and the Tenth District involving chain-reaction crashes, where lead drivers who stopped improperly, or who let a load fall into the road, were held potentially liable to drivers several cars back. It concluded that "our holding in Didier will be limited to its facts."

Applying the correct rule to Ms. Crosby's case, the court held that reasonable minds could find the truck driver would anticipate that, while the car right behind him might stop, cars farther back might not; that the chain of events he set in motion unfolded in rapid and unbroken succession; and that he and Ms. Crosby were concurrent wrongdoers whose shares of fault a jury must compare under R.C. 2315.33.

Judge Hall dissented. He would have held that the two drivers who stopped safely broke the causal chain and that Ms. Crosby's swerving and over-correction were the sole cause of her collision. His dissent is a preview of the arguments defense lawyers will continue to make; the majority opinion is the law in this district.

How comparative fault works in a case like this

Ohio's comparative-fault statute, R.C. 2315.33, does not bar an injured person from recovering simply because she was partly to blame. As long as her fault is not greater than the combined fault of everyone else, she recovers, with her damages reduced by her percentage of fault. We walked through the arithmetic in our post on being partly at fault.

So a jury in a case like Crosby will be asked: how much of the blame belongs to the trucker who stopped in a travel lane and tried to back into traffic, and how much to the driver who failed to stop in time? If the jury puts the trucker at 60 percent and the driver at 40, she recovers 60 percent of her damages. If it puts her at 51 percent or more, she recovers nothing. Under Didier, the jury never got the question.

Why this matters for serious crashes

Chain-reaction and multi-vehicle pile-ups on I-70, I-75, and U.S. 35 are among the most severe crashes in the Dayton area, and they frequently involve commercial trucks. The driver at the back of the line is often the one most badly hurt, and before Crosby, often the one with no claim. Now the conduct of the driver who created the hazard is back in the case, and with it the trucking company's insurance coverage. Our pages on rear-end collisions and truck accident claims explain the evidence that matters in those cases: driver logs, dispatch records, maintenance history, and, in a case like this one, why a tractor-trailer was stopped in a lane of an interstate in the first place.

What this means for you

If you were injured in a rear-end or chain-reaction crash and were told, or assumed, that you have no claim because you were the one who could not stop, that advice may be out of date in this district. The question now is how the fault divides, and that depends on facts: why the vehicle at the front stopped, where it stopped, what it did next, and what each driver in between saw and did. Those facts are gathered from witnesses, crash reports, and physical evidence, all of which fade quickly.