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Grandstaff v. Hawks5/31/2000
d in 1992. See McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d at 57. It remains a work-in-progress in many respects today even though eight years have passed. While the Tennessee Supreme Court continues to work through precisely how its comparative fault scheme affects traditional legal principles surrounding tort litigation, many questions await definitive answers. Some of these questions involve multi-party litigation. This case involves one such question.
McIntyre v. Balentine was a typical two-party motor vehicle collision case. One driver sued the other driver for negligence, and the other driver denied that he was negligent and asserted that the plaintiff driver was contributorially negligent. The jury returned a verdict for the defendant after hearing evidence that both drivers had been drinking and that the plaintiff driver had been speeding. The Tennessee Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded the case for another trial based on its newly minted comparative fault principles. To assist the parties, the Court provided suggested jury instructions and a suggested verdict form suitable for two-party litigation only. See McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d at 59-60. The Court also invited the Committee on Civil Pattern Jury Instructions to promulgate new standard jury instructions and pointed out that modifications to its two-party instructions would be required for "more complex litigation." See McIntyre v. Balentine, 833 S.W.2d at 58, 59.
The Committee on Civil Pattern Jury Instructions responded to the Tennessee Supreme Court's invitation by issuing proposed instructions and verdict forms intended to replace the suggested instructions and forms appended to McIntyre v. Balentine. See 8 Committee On Civil Pattern Jury Instructions, Tennessee Pattern Jury Instructions T.P.I. 3-Civil 3.01 - 3.63 (3d ed. 1997) ("T.P.I. 3-Civil"). In addition to a two-party verdict form, see T.P.I. 3-Civil 3.59, the Committee also prepared a verdict form applicable to two-vehicle collision cases involving two drivers and two passengers. See T.P.I. 3-Civil 3.61. We have determined that this instruction is not satisfactory because it fails to differentiate between a passenger's fault that was a cause of the collision and a passenger's fault that only contributed to the passenger's injuries.
Under Tennessee's modified comparative fault scheme, a jury must consider causation in fact when comparing fault. See Eaton v. McClain, 891 S.W.2d 587, 592 (Tenn. 1994) (holding that the percentage of fault assigned to a party depends on the "relative closeness of the causal relationship" between the conduct and the injury ). Other jurisdictions and authorities that consider causation when comparing fault have distinguished between conduct that causes or contributes to one's own injuries and conduct that causes or contributes to the collision or accident. See Victor E. Schwartz, Comparative Negligence §§ 4-6, 4-6(a), 4-6(b) (3d ed. 1994 & Supp. 1999); Henry Woods & Beth Deere, Comparative Fault §§ 5:5, 5:6. While Tennessee's courts have not directly confronted this matter, the distinction seems to be implicit in the Tennessee Supreme Court differentiation between "comparative negligence" and "comparative fault."
Courts in other jurisdictions have addressed the distinction between fault contributing to one's own injuries and fault contributing to the collision in cases involving otherwise faultless passengers who failed to wear their seatbelts. Although Tennessee has limited the admissibility of evidence of seatbelt use in civil trials, these decisions provide clear and helpful examples of the distinction between fault contributing to the collision and fault contributing to one's own injuries. A passe
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