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Walker v. the8/6/1992
Robert Walker was killed when his semi truck left State Route 101 and plunged over an embankment. His widow, Delores Walker, brought a wrongful death action against those jurisdictions responsible for the design, construction, or maintenance of the highway. A jury found negligence on the part of the State, Clallam County and the Port of Port Angeles, but also found Mr. Walker 70 percent contributorily negligent. The judgment was reduced accordingly.
On appeal, Mrs. Walker challenges several evidentiary rulings and jury instructions, seeking reversal and a remand for a new trial limited to the issue of contributory negligence. Although we agree that error in the jury instructions necessitates reversal and a new trial, we decline to limit a new trial to the issue of contributory negligence.
Robert Walker, a truck driver for Continental Baking Company, generally worked the night shift, traveling his Seattle to Port Angeles route via Interstate 5, State Route
16, the Hood Canal Bridge and State Route 101, between 11 p.m. and 5:30 a.m. He had been handling this route for approximately 5 years when, on October 7, 1985, at approximately 3:15 a.m., this fatal accident occurred. As he drove on SR 101 near Sequim, his truck left the pavement, continued along the dirt shoulder, and then dropped over a steep bank, finally coming to rest against a tree. The truck cab was crushed and Mr. Walker was pronounced dead by the first paramedic to reach the scene.
The accident occurred in the vicinity of a new intersection and left turn lane constructed by the defendants in connection with a marina project. The road revisions were completed in June of 1985, about 4 months before Mr. Walker's death. As part of the project, SR 101 was widened by 12 feet on the north shoulder, causing Port Angeles-bound traffic to shift closer to the edge of a steep embankment. The construction also included a repaving project, which resulted in the obliteration of the fog line along the northern edge of the road. There were no warning signs or guardrails in the area around the intersection.
At trial, Mrs. Walker attempted to introduce a series of photographs of the above stretch of SR 101, taken in 1980, before the construction of the intersection. The trial court refused to admit the 1980 photographs, reasoning that the condition of the road 5 years before the accident was not relevant. However, the trial judge did allow the plaintiffs to introduce into evidence a videotape of the road as it appeared in 1984, as well as a series of still photographs which also depicted the state of the road in the months before the construction project began.
The plaintiff called a "human factors" expert, Dieter Jahns, to support her theory of the case -- that Mr. Walker pulled off the road to let a car behind him pass, became disoriented by the absence of road markings, and drove over the bank. Jahns described how a typical motorist might react to various highway
markings and environmental conditions. Although Jahns was not permitted to testify that the accident occurred because Mr. Walker pulled over to the right to let a car behind him pass, he did testify, without objection, that "the information that he [Walker] most probably processed was that he had sufficient room to pull . . . or just drift to the right." The defendants supported their theory of the case, that Mr. Walker lost control of the truck when he negligently fell asleep at the wheel, with the testimony of a sleep expert, Dr. William DeMent.
Jury Instructions
[1-3] On appeal, Mrs. Walker assigns error to six of the trial court's jury instructions and to the court's failure to
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