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Redmond v. Socha10/6/2005
contention that someone must be found liable in this case. In Millette, the plaintiff's injuries were caused by the negligence of one or more of three defendants, one of whom counterclaimed against the other two. The trial court held, as a matter of law, that the plaintiff was not contributorily negligent and instructed the jury that it must find for the plaintiff and against one or more of the defendants. No verdict form was submitted that would have allowed the jury to find all three defendants not liable. Millette, 84 Ill. App. 3d at 26. The jury found in favor of the plaintiff against all defendants and in favor of the counterplaintiff against the other two defendants. All defendants appealed. Millette, 84 Ill. App. 3d at 7. The appellate court affirmed, noting that there was no evidence of any intervening cause or act of God and that "the real issue for the jury to determine was which of the defendants caused the [plaintiff's] injury." Millette, 84 Ill. App. 3d at 26. The court posited that when two vehicles collide, " `thereby injuring an innocent party,' " a " `presumption of negligence' " arises. Millette, 84 Ill. App. 3d at 26-27, quoting Krump v. Highlander Ice Cream Co., 30 Ill. App. 2d 103, 105 (1961). In such cases, the court stated, once the plaintiff has made out a prima facie case of negligence, the burden is on any nonnegligent defendant to " `make the required proof of exculpation.' " Millette, 84 Ill. App. 3d at 27, quoting Krump, 30 Ill. App. 2d at 106.
Redmond offers Millette as authority for the proposition that, in the present case, verdicts in favor of both the defendant and the counterdefendant cannot stand. We find Millette distinguishable from the present case and from the line of cases involving claims and counterclaims of negligence. Millette involved a plaintiff who was found, as a matter of law, not to have contributed to his own injury. He made a prima facie case that his injuries were caused by the negligence of one or more of the three defendants. The present case involves only two parties, each of whom accuses the other of being primarily responsible for the accident.
Applying the case law from the line of cases involving two or more claims, we find that there are several reasonable explanations for the jury's finding that neither the defendant nor the counterdefendant in the present case should be held liable, even in the absence of evidence of any intervening cause or condition for the accident. The jury could have found neither party credible and, thus, found the evidence so conflicting, inconclusive, and unsatisfactory that it could not find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that either party had made its case. The jury might have concluded that one of the parties was not negligent, but that he or she failed to meet the burden of proving that the other party was negligent. It is also possible that the jury found the relative fault of the parties to be more or less equal to their proportion of damages and decided to do rough justice by just leaving each party where it stood. In effect, the jury could have found that Redmond caused his own injuries and Socha caused the damage to her car.
We conclude that the jury's verdicts are not legally inconsistent. According to Black's Law Dictionary, a "legally inconsistent verdict" is one "in which the same element is found to exist and not to exist, as when a defendant is acquitted of one offense and convicted of another, even though the offenses arise from the same set of facts and an element of the second offense requires proof that the first offense has been committed." Black's Law Dictionary 1592 (8th ed. 2004). Another reference describes legally inconsistent verdicts as "two findings treating of the
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