Negligence Isn't 'On Purpose': Why an Ohio Court Gave an Injured Guest a Second Trial (Sheffield v. Estate of Bentley)

Published October 28, 2015 · Ohio Appeals Courts

Picture the scene. You are standing in a friend's kitchen after an evening out. Her 93-year-old mother is in the garage on the other side of the wall, parking the car. You hear the engine rev. Then the car comes through the wall, into the kitchen, and into you. Last month the Twelfth District Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from Warren, Butler, Clermont, and several other Southwest Ohio counties, decided what happens when the jury in that case is told, in effect, that the driver cannot be liable unless she meant to do it. The case is Sheffield v. Estate of Bentley, 2015-Ohio-3834.

What happened

The facts come from the court's opinion. In July 2010, Sherry Sheffield was visiting a friend and the friend's mother, Myrtle Bentley, at Mrs. Bentley's home in Fayette County. Sheffield drove the three women to a party and back in Mrs. Bentley's car. When they returned, Mrs. Bentley asked to park the car in the garage herself. Sheffield and the daughter went inside to the kitchen, which shared a wall with the garage. They heard the engine revving. The car burst through the back wall of the garage into the kitchen and injured Sheffield.

Sheffield sued for negligence in 2012. Mrs. Bentley died the following year, and her estate was substituted as the defendant. The case went to a jury in July 2014. Sheffield and two of her doctors testified. The defense presented no evidence at all.

One word in closing argument

Defense counsel's closing argument was short. He told the jury there was no evidence Mrs. Bentley was negligent, that the only evidence was Sheffield's own understanding that the accelerator had stuck. Then he asked the jury: "What evidence is there that she purposely stomped on the gas and drove through the wall?"

Sheffield's lawyer objected immediately. The judge told the jury it would hear no requirement that anyone acted purposely, that this was a negligence case, and told defense counsel not to use that word. Counsel agreed and moved on. Later, while reading the final instructions, the judge himself misspoke, saying a plaintiff must prove the other party acted "negligently, the word intentionally should not have been in these instructions." The written instructions were correct.

The jury returned a verdict for the estate.

The trial judge orders a new trial

Sheffield asked for a new trial under Civil Rule 59, which permits one when misconduct by the winning party or its lawyer tainted the verdict. The trial judge granted it. He wrote that he had been taken aback when the word "purposely" was injected into the defense closing, that he believed counsel had used the legal term intentionally rather than by accident, and that his mild rebuke may not have erased it from the jurors' minds. He found a substantial likelihood that the jury had been misled, and he concluded: "There is room for doubt and that doubt must be resolved in favor of Plaintiff."

The court of appeals agrees

The estate appealed, arguing that a single word, immediately objected to and corrected, could not justify throwing out a verdict, especially when (in its view) there was no evidence of negligence anyway. One judge on the three-judge panel agreed with the estate and dissented, reasoning that juries are presumed to follow curative instructions.

The majority affirmed the new trial. It emphasized that the trial judge was in the best position to assess whether counsel's remark was deliberate and what effect it had on the jurors, that appellate courts defer to judges who saw the trial rather than reading a cold record, and that under Supreme Court of Ohio precedent, when there is room for doubt about whether improper argument influenced a verdict, the doubt is resolved in favor of the losing party. The judge's own slip of the tongue about "intentionally" during the final instructions made it even more plausible that the jury went into deliberations with the wrong standard in mind.

Sheffield will get her second trial.

Why "purposely" was so damaging

Negligence is the failure to use reasonable care. It is about carelessness, not intent. A driver who presses the accelerator instead of the brake, who misjudges the distance to a wall, or who loses control of a vehicle she can no longer safely operate is negligent if a reasonably careful person would have avoided the mistake. Nobody has to prove she wanted to drive through the kitchen.

Defense lawyers know this. They also know that jurors, left to their instincts, often feel it is unfair to hold a 93-year-old woman responsible for an "accident." Asking the jury whether she "purposely stomped on the gas" was a way of inviting them to apply an intent standard without saying so, and of converting a case about carelessness into a case about blame. The trial judge saw it for what it was.

The "stuck accelerator" defense

The estate's other theme deserves a comment. The defense offered no evidence that the accelerator stuck; it relied on Sheffield's testimony that this was the family's best guess. A sudden mechanical failure can be a defense to negligence, but the party asserting it generally has to show that the failure actually occurred and could not have been anticipated. "The car just took off" is an explanation, not proof, and it does not account for a driver's ability to brake, shift into neutral, or turn off the ignition. In a retrial, those questions will be squarely in front of the jury.

The lesson about defense verdicts

Injured people sometimes hear "the jury found for the defense" and assume the fight is over. It is not always. Ohio trial judges have the authority to order a new trial when a verdict is against the weight of the evidence or when improper argument likely influenced it, and courts of appeals will respect that call. The right to a fair trial belongs to the plaintiff as much as to the defendant.

This also illustrates why the choice of lawyer matters at trial. The objection was made instantly. The motion for a new trial was filed and argued with the record in hand. Had the objection not been made, the issue likely would have been lost.

Who pays in a case like this

A guest injured in a home by the homeowner's own driving looks for recovery to the homeowner's auto liability policy, and possibly a homeowner's or umbrella policy as well. The fact that the at-fault driver has died does not end the claim; her estate stands in her place, as it did here, and her insurer continues to defend and pay. In some situations the injured person's own underinsured-motorist coverage may also come into play. Sorting out which policies respond is part of what we do in every injury case, whether the harm happened on the road or on someone's property.

What this means for you

If you were hurt by someone's carelessness, you do not have to prove they meant to hurt you. You have to prove they failed to use reasonable care and that the failure caused your injury. Ohio's comparative negligence rules may reduce a recovery if you share fault, and the violation of a specific safety statute can sometimes establish negligence outright, as we discussed in an earlier post on negligence per se. But intent is not part of the equation, and any suggestion otherwise, from an adjuster or from a lawyer in a courtroom, is wrong.