Deana Presley, Individually and as the Special Administratrix of the Estate of Geraldine Cook, Deceased, and William Cook v. Leonard Brown, Cecil Fuller, and Clarksville Refrigerated Lines I, Ltd.

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NOT DESIGNATED FOR PUBLICATION DIVISION IV  CA06­1309  7 November  2007  DEANA PRESLEY, Individually and  as the Special Administratrix of the                 AN APPEAL FROM THE CONWAY  Estate of GERALDINE COOK,  COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT  Deceased, and WILLIAM COOK,                 [CV­04­194]  APPELLANTS  v.  THE HONORABLE DAVID H.  LEONARD BROWN, CECIL                     MCCORMICK, CIRCUIT JUDGE  FULLER and CLARKSVILLE  REFRIGERATED LINES I, LTD,               AFFIRMED  APPELLEES  This case arose from an accident between Geraldine and William Cook’s car and  the tractor­trailer rig that Leonard Brown was driving for Clarksville Refrigerated Lines  I.  William Cook and Deana Presley, individually and as the special administratrix of  her mother’s estate, appeal the jury’s verdict against their claims and seek a new trial  based on several alleged errors in the circuit court.  For simplicity, we will refer to all  the  appellants  as  “the  Cooks”  and  all  the  appellees  as  “Clarksville  Refrigerated.”  Clarksville Refrigerated argues that the Cooks’ points on appeal are moot, but that no  reversible error occurred in any event.  We affirm on the merits.  I.  When  his  tractor­trailer  lost  power  and  the  engine  started  knocking,  Brown  pulled onto the side of I­40 near the Carlisle exit.  A rescue tractor came to pull away  Brown’s trailer, and it parked in front of Brown on the right shoulder of I­40.  Brown  disconnected his tractor from his trailer, drove onto the interstate briefly to pass ahead  of the rescue truck, and then started to return to the right shoulder of the interstate.  Meanwhile, the Cooks’ vehicle was headed toward the scene.  When Mr. Cook saw  the trailer on the side of the interstate ahead of him, he straddled the center line with  his car to give the trailer some clearance.  But he ran into the back of Brown’s tractor,  which was finishing its pass of the rescue tractor.  Both of the Cooks were injured in  the accident, and Mrs. Cook later died from her injuries.  Mr. Cook filed a negligence action against Brown, Cecil Fuller (who owned  Brown’s tractor), and Clarksville Refrigerated Lines I, Ltd.  After Mrs. Cook died, the  special administratrix of her estate joined the complaint.  Clarksville Refrigerated filed  a counterclaim for damage to the tractor that it leased from Fuller.  A  jury rendered a  special  verdict  and  answered  several  interrogatories.    It  assigned  100%  of  the  responsibility for the accident to Mr. Cook.  The jury also found that there was a joint  enterprise between Mr. and Mrs. Cook, and that neither of them suffered any damages. 2  II.  Clarksville Refrigerated tries to block the Cooks’ appeal at the threshold with  a mootness argument from the jury’s answers to some of the special interrogatories.  Among other things, the jury found:  INTERROGATORY  NO.  6:  State  the  amount  of  any  damages  which you find from a preponderance of the evidence were sustained by  William Cook as a result of the occurrence.  ANSWER: $0  * * *  INTERROGATORY  NO.  7:  State  the  amount  of  any  damages  which you find from a preponderance of the evidence were sustained by  Deanna [sic] Presley, Individually, and as a Special Administratrix of the  Estate of Geraldine Cook, deceased, as a result of the occurrence.  ANSWER:  Estate: $0  William Cook: $0  Michelle Presley: $0  Viola Scroggins: $0  Shirlene Young: $0  These answers were not justified by the evidence about damages—Mrs. Cook  died from the injuries she sustained in the wreck and Mr. Cook was severely injured.  But the Cooks do not challenge directly the jury’s findings about damages on appeal.  Clarksville Refrigerated argues that these no­damages findings are conclusive, and the  Cooks have therefore shown no prejudice from the alleged trial errors that they do 3  press on appeal.  We reject Clarksville Refrigerated’s mootness argument.  The jury’s answers to  interrogatories 6 and 7 have given us some pause because the Cooks’ damages are as  obvious  as  the  jury’s  answers  are  unequivocal.    The  explanation  lies  in  the  jury’s  instructions:  the circuit court’s instructions conditioned any finding about the amount  of the Cooks’ damages on a threshold finding that Clarksville Refrigerated was liable.  We  see  the  jury doing what  it  was  told  to  do.    Because  it  decided  for  Clarksville  Refrigerated on liability in its answers to interrogatories 1­4, the jury never reached the  amount of the Cooks’ damages.  We conclude that the jury put in all those “0”s to  make plain that the Cooks should not recover any money, not to find that they sustained  no damages.  The Cooks  allege errors during voir dire, in the jury instructions, and in the  circuit court’s decision to send the issue of their alleged negligence to the jury.  The  Cooks assert prejudice from all these rulings in the jury’s eventual findings against  them on liability.  Because those findings, pursuant to the circuit court’s instructions,  stopped  the  jury from deciding the  amount  of damages,  the  jury’s  “0”  answers  to  interrogatories 6 and 7 do not moot this case.  The Cooks are entitled to a decision on  the merits.  III.  The Cooks first argue that the circuit judge erred by allowing a particular line of 4  questions  during jury selection.  The lawyer for Clarksville Refrigerated asked the  members of the venire whether they had previously served on a jury in a personal­injury  or wrongful­death case, whether that jury had returned a plaintiff’s verdict or a defense  verdict, and whether they had agreed with the verdict.  The circuit court overruled the  Cooks’ objections to those questions, but told Clarksville Refrigerated that it could  probe no deeper.  The Cooks contend that the circuit court’s ruling violated Arkansas  Rule of Evidence 606(b).  Rule 606 does not apply here.  Clarksville Refrigerated was not inquiring into  the  validity  of  the  verdicts  in  past  cases.  Cf.  New Prospect  Drilling  Co.  v.  First  Commercial Trust, N.A., 332 Ark. 466, 478, 966 S.W.2d 233, 239–40 (1998).  During  jury  selection,  the  parties  may  explore  any  possible  bias  or  prejudice  that  might  influence  a  prospective  juror’s  vote.  Hill  v.  Billups,  85  Ark.  App.  166,  173,  148  S.W.3d  288,  293  (2004).  At  some  point,  digging  into  a  prospective  juror’s  deliberations as part of the jury in another case could invade the sanctity of the jury  room, but no fixed rule applies.  Ark. R. Civ. P. 47(a) and Reporter’s Notes; Missouri  Pacific Transp. Co. v. Johnson, 197 Ark. 1129, 1133–35, 126 S.W.2d 931, 933–34  (1939).  Our law leaves the scope of questioning during voir dire to the circuit court’s  sound discretion.  Hill, supra.  No abuse of that discretion occurred here.  IV.  The  Cooks  take  issue  with  two  of  the  circuit  court’s  rulings  about  jury 5  instructions—one  related  to  the  safety  of  Brown’s  tractor  and  the  other  about  the  doctrine of joint enterprise.  The parties were entitled to any jury instruction that was  a correct statement of law if the instruction had some basis in the evidence.  Williams  v. First Unum Life Ins. Co., 358 Ark. 224, 229, 188 S.W.3d 908, 911 (2004).  Under  Arkansas  Rule  of  Civil  Procedure  51,  the  Cooks’  objections  to  the  circuit  court’s  refusal to give a jury instruction had to be specific and accompanied by a proffer of an  accurate instruction.  First,  the  Cooks  assert  that  the  circuit  court  erred  by  refusing  to  give  their  proffered jury instruction about driving unsafe vehicles.  Their proposed instruction was  AMI 910: “No person shall drive on any highway a vehicle which is in such an unsafe  condition as to endanger any person.” Brown’s tractor, they argue, was unsafe because  it  had  a  “defect”—it  did  not  have  proper  lighting  and  was  incapable  of  normal  acceleration—which contributed to the accident.  The Cooks, however, waived part of this argument.  At trial they based their  request  for  the  instruction simply  on  the  tractor’s  “defect”  without  mentioning  the  lights.  Barnes v. Everett, 351 Ark. 479, 494, 95 S.W.3d 740, 750 (2003).  The circuit  court’s ruling makes clear that it understood that the “defect” everyone was talking  about was the tractor’s engine trouble, not its lighting.  Unsafe, on that [jury instruction], I think what we’re talking about  unsafe vehicle, . . . at the point this accident occurred, the vehicles – the  motor trouble it was having was not what the cause of the accident, . . . 6  The vehicle, all the testimony showed, had enough speed left, even in the  condition it was in, to perform the . . . maneuver that was attempted.  I  think the un – the unsafe conditions set in the total chain of events, but .  . . how far back up the chain do we go, but for the engine being broke  down to start with we wouldn’t be here, but I think that’s too remote in  time, and is not a direct cause of the action.  Moreover, the Cooks did not proffer a proper instruction about the tractor’s  lights.  The use of lights on motor vehicles is the subject of various statutes, one of  which applied here, Ark. Code Ann. § 27­36­204 (Repl. 2004).  On the lights, the  Cooks should have proffered that provision as an AMI 903 instruction—the violation  of a statute as evidence of negligence.  They did not do so.  The deeper issue is whether the circuit court abused its discretion by making an  error of law in ruling that the tractor’s engine trouble was too remote to be a proximate  cause of the accident.  The Cooks were entitled to AMI 910 if the record contained  proof that the tractor’s engine problem was a proximate cause.  Thomas v. Kellett, 260  Ark. 548, 550, 542 S.W.2d 501, 502 (1976). We discern no error.  Brown testified that  the tractor accelerated fine when he pulled around the rescue tractor. While the Cooks’  expert noted that the tractor could only reach twenty miles an hour, he agreed on cross­  examination that it appeared to have plenty of acceleration to complete the passing  maneuver.  We agree with the circuit court that the tractor’s initial engine trouble is too  far back along the chain of causation to be a proximate cause of the accident. Lovell  v. Brock, 330 Ark. 206, 215–16, 952 S.W.2d 161, 166 (1997).  And absent proof that 7  the  engine  defect  caused  the  tractor  to  operate  poorly  during  the  later  passing  maneuver,  the  circuit  court  did  not  abuse  its  discretion  by  rejecting  an  AMI  910  instruction based on the engine problem.  Second, the Cooks argue that the circuit court erred by instructing the jury on the  doctrine of joint enterprise.  They contend that the doctrine is an unfair fiction, and was  extraordinarily confusing in this case when coupled with the comparative­fault analysis.  We see no basis for reversal on this issue either.  The joint­enterprise doctrine has fallen into disfavor in Arkansas.  Our supreme  court has expressed a willingness to reconsider the doctrine in a proper case.  Yant v.  Woods, 353 Ark. 786, 794–95, 120 S.W.3d 574, 579–80 (2003).  The Cooks do not  ask us to overrule the doctrine, and we may not do so.  Box v. State, 348 Ark. 116, 124,  71 S.W.3d 552, 557 (2002).  And the  supreme court denied the Cooks’ motion to  certify this case on that issue to that court.  The proof made a jury question on whether a joint enterprise existed between the  Cooks.  They were on a short vacation in their jointly owned Buick;  Mr. Cook said  that he usually drove and Mrs. Cook did not make suggestions about the route or when  to  stop;  he  also  testified,  however,  that  he  would  have  respected  any  such  recommendation from her.  Yant, 353 Ark. at 789–92, 120 S.W.3d at 576–78. The jury  was entitled to decide whether she had an equal, if unused, voice about their travels in  their  car.  We  see  no  particular  difficulty  in  the  jury  having  to  impute  the  Cooks’ 8  alleged negligence to each other before comparing the Cooks’ fault with Clarksville  Refrigerated’s fault.  The circuit court did not abuse its discretion by giving a joint­  enterprise instruction in this case.  Williams, supra.  The doctrine, though disfavored,  remains the law in Arkansas.  V.  For their fourth point, the Cooks argue that the trial court erred in denying their  motions for a directed verdict on the issue of Mr. and Mrs. Cook’s negligence. The  Cooks, however, did not preserve their sufficiency argument for appeal because their  motion for a directed verdict was not specific.  Ark. R. Civ. P. 50(a); Thomas v. Olson,  364 Ark. 444, 447–48, 220 S.W.3d 627, 630–31 (2005).  Even if they had preserved  this point, substantial evidence supports the jury’s verdict.  J.E. Merit Constructors,  Inc. v. Cooper, 345 Ark. 136, 140–41, 44 S.W.3d 336, 340 (2001).  Clarksville Refrigerated’s expert testified that Mr. and Mrs. Cook could see  Brown’s tractor on I­40 between four and six seconds before the impact.  The expert  said that Mr. Cook had enough time to avoid the collision by moving the car entirely  into the left lane or by applying his brakes.  The expert also opined that there was  enough  time  for  Mrs.  Cook  to  warn  her  husband  of  the  danger  ahead.    Mr.  Cook  testified that he was not using his cruise­control and that he saw Brown’s trailer parked  on the shoulder.  He said that he only made a partial lane­change, and in hindsight  wished he would have moved all the way into the left­hand lane.  He said he probably 9  had enough time to have gotten over there, but didn’t.  Mr. Cook neither braked nor  slowed down.  On cross­examination, he confirmed that he hit Brown’s tractor before  he  saw  it.  This  evidence  establishes  that  the  question  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Cook’s  negligence was for the jury to answer.  J.E. Merit Constructors, Inc., supra.  Affirmed.  BAKER  and MILLER, JJ., agree. 10 

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