Devin W. Rowling Vs. Jane Louise Sims

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
No. 43 / 05-0947
Filed June 8, 2007
DEVIN W. ROWLING,
Appellant,
vs.
JANE LOUISE SIMS,
Appellee.
On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Douglas F.
Staskal, Judge.
The driver of a vehicle appeals an adverse jury verdict and seeks
further review of a court of appeals decision claiming there was insufficient
evidence for the district court to submit an instruction to the jury on the
impossibility category of the legal excuse doctrine. DECISION OF THE
COURT OF APPEALS VACATED; DISTRICT COURT JUDGMENT
REVERSED AND CASE REMANDED.
Thomas G. Ross of Thomas G. Ross Law Office, Des Moines, for
appellant.
Kenneth R. Munro of Bradshaw, Fowler, Proctor & Fairgrave, P.C.,
Des Moines, for appellee.
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WIGGINS, Justice.
In this case we must decide if substantial evidence supports the
district court’s instruction on the impossibility category of the legal excuse
doctrine. Because we find substantial evidence does not support the giving
of the instruction, we vacate the decision of the court of appeals, reverse the
judgment of the district court, and remand the case for a new trial.
On December 19, 2000, between 4:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. a car
accident occurred between Devin Rowling and Jane Louise Sims. At the
time of the accident it was not snowing, but there was snow on the ground.
Rowling was driving his vehicle eastbound on Grand Avenue in
Des Moines. Grand Avenue is a four-lane road, running east and west, with
two lanes for eastbound traffic and two lanes for westbound traffic. Rowling
was driving the speed limit in the inside eastbound lane, the lane nearest
the center line.
At the same time Sims was in her vehicle in a private driveway at
2130 Grand Avenue, facing north, waiting to cross traffic, and turn
westbound onto Grand Avenue. The driveway is approximately thirty-feet
wide. Between the driveway and the street there is a sidewalk. On the west
side of the driveway between the sidewalk and the traveled portion of the
road is a parking lane, which allows for two to three cars to parallel park
along the south side of Grand Avenue.
Sims acknowledged from her vantage point she could clearly see
traffic approaching from the east. To the west, however, Sims claimed a pile
of snow hindered her view of the eastbound Grand Avenue traffic. She
testified this pile was located in the parallel parking lane. Sims decided the
best way for her to see any eastbound traffic was to look up the sidewalk
area for headlights coming from the west.
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Once Sims perceived headlights were not coming from the west, she
pulled onto Grand Avenue. As Sims pulled into traffic, Rowling testified she
stopped at the yellow center line. Rowling, traveling in the inside eastbound
lane, attempted to avoid Sims’s vehicle, but he “remember[ed] somebody
being kind of in [his] blind spot on [his] right-hand side. So [he] didn’t want
to turn into their way as well.” Rowling was unable to stop his vehicle and
struck Sims’s vehicle on the driver’s side.
Rowling brought a negligence action against Sims alleging Sims did
not yield the right-of-way and failed to operate her vehicle in a safe manner.
The case proceeded to a jury trial. The court instructed the jury on Sims’s
duty in instruction twelve as follows:
The driver of a vehicle about to enter a street from a
driveway shall stop the vehicle immediately before driving onto
the street and shall yield the right of way to other approaching
vehicles that are so close as to pose a danger. Then the driver,
having yielded, may proceed to cautiously and carefully enter
the street.
A violation of this law is negligence.
The court gave the following instruction on legal excuse:
The defendant claims that if you find that if she violated
the law in operating her motor vehicle by failing to yield to
oncoming traffic when entering a street from a driveway that
she had a legal excuse for doing so because she could not see
oncoming traffic and, therefore, was not negligent in this
respect. “Legal excuse” means someone seeks to avoid the
consequences of her conduct by justifying acts which would
otherwise be considered negligent. The burden is upon the
defendant to establish as a legal excuse that it was impossible
for her to yield to oncoming traffic because she could not see
oncoming traffic.
If you find that the defendant did violate the law by
failing to yield to oncoming traffic as defined in Instruction No.
12, and that she has established that it was impossible for her
to do so, then you should find that the defendant was not
negligent for failing to yield to oncoming traffic.
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Rowling objected to the instruction claiming the evidence did not
support the giving of this instruction. The district court overruled Rowling’s
objection.
The jury answered the question: “Was the defendant at fault?” in the
negative. Accordingly, the court entered a judgment dismissing Rowling’s
petition and assessing the costs against him.
Rowling moved for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict and new
trial or conditional new trial regarding the jury instruction on legal excuse.
The district court denied both motions.
Rowling appealed and we transferred the case to our court of appeals.
The court of appeals, with one judge dissenting, found the legal excuse jury
instruction was a correct statement of the law and was substantially
supported by the evidence. Rowling petitioned for further review, which we
granted.
We review Rowling’s claim that the legal excuse jury instruction was
not supported by the evidence for correction of errors at law. See Summy v.
City of Des Moines, 708 N.W.2d 333, 340 (Iowa 2006) (noting the two
standards for review of jury instructions: “We review a claim that the court
gave an instruction that was not supported by the evidence for correction of
errors of law. We review the related claim that the trial court should have
given the defendant’s requested instructions for an abuse of discretion.”
(Internal citation omitted.)). When reviewing a claim that an instruction
was not supported by substantial evidence, we view the evidence in the light
most favorable to the party seeking the instruction. Franklin v. Andrews,
595 N.W.2d 488, 489 (Iowa 1999).
Instruction twelve correctly instructed the jury on Sims’s duty to stop
or yield before she entered Grand Avenue from the private driveway. Iowa
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Code § 321.353(2) (1999). A violation of a statutory duty constitutes
negligence per se, absent a legal excuse. Jones v. Blair, 387 N.W.2d 349,
352 (Iowa 1986) (citing Kisling v. Thierman, 214 Iowa 911, 915, 243 N.W.
552, 554 (1932)). The legal excuse doctrine allows a person to avoid the
consequences of a particular act or type of conduct by showing justification
for acts that otherwise would be considered negligent. Meyer v. City of Des
Moines, 475 N.W.2d 181, 185 (Iowa 1991); Jones, 387 N.W.2d at 352.
There are four categories of legal excuse:
(1) anything that would make it impossible to comply with the
statute or ordinance;
(2) anything over which the driver has no control which places
the driver’s motor vehicle in a position contrary to the
provisions of the statute or ordinance;
(3) where the driver of the motor vehicle is confronted by an
emergency not of the driver’s own making, and by reason of
such an emergency, the driver fails to obey the statute; and
(4) where a statute specifically provides an excuse or exception.
Meyer, 475 N.W.2d at 185.
A jury should only be instructed on the category of legal excuse
supported by the evidence. See Jones, 387 N.W.2d at 353-54. In this case
Sims claims the evidence supported the court giving the first category of the
legal excuse doctrine—impossibility. Sims argues she was legally excused
from the duty imposed on her by section 321.353 because the pile of snow
located in the parallel parking lane west of the driveway made it impossible
for her to yield the right-of–way.
We do not give a narrow, literal construction to “impossible” as used
in the legal excuse doctrine. Meyer, 475 N.W.2d at 186. Instead,
impossible under the doctrine of legal excuse means “not reasonably
practicable.” Id. Our review of the record reveals there was nothing in the
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facts of this case to make it not reasonably practicable for Sims to yield the
right-of-way to Rowling.
Even though Sims claims her vision was obstructed by the pile of
snow, she had a duty under the statute to stop, look, and listen in order to
determine whether there was traffic on Grand Avenue before she pulled out
of the driveway. Rubel v. Hoffman, 229 N.W.2d 261, 265 (Iowa 1975)
(stating it was the defendant’s statutory duty under section 321.353 “to
stop, look and listen in order to ascertain whether there was oncoming
traffic before entering the public highway”). There is nothing in the record
that required Sims to move from a place of safety and to pull onto Grand
Avenue. Instead of blindly pulling onto Grand Avenue there were other
reasonably practicable actions Sims could have taken to comply with her
duty to yield the right-of-way.
First, she could have backed up to a distance sufficient to see the
eastbound traffic, where the pile of snow did not obstruct her view. Second,
she could have positioned her vehicle on the far right side of the thirty-foot-
wide driveway giving her a better view of the eastbound traffic. Third, she
could have inched her vehicle into the traveled portion of the road until she
had an adequate view of the eastbound traffic. Under the specific facts of
this case a collision would not have occurred because Rowling’s vehicle was
traveling in the center lane. Finally, she could have made a right-hand
turn. Although these possible alternatives may seem burdensome on Sims,
they are not so burdensome when viewed from the perspective of an
innocent person who may be injured by Sims’s choice of blindly entering a
busy four-lane street at rush hour.
Therefore, substantial evidence did not support the district court’s
legal excuse instruction. Accordingly, we must vacate the decision of the
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court of appeals, reverse the judgment of the district court, and remand the
case for a new trial.
DECISION OF THE COURT OF APPEALS VACATED; DISTRICT
COURT JUDGMENT REVERSED AND CASE REMANDED.