MONTGOMERY, Ala. (Legal Newsline) - An Alabama man who was injured after he hot-started a truck and it ran him over, crushing his leg, will get a second chance at a jury trial after the Alabama Supreme Court said a trial judge improperly dismissed his case.
Steven D. Lands sued for injuries he received after he climbed out of the cab of a 1994 Peterbilt and using a cigarette lighter for illumination, hot-wired the ignition with a 12-inch piece of bare wire. The truck jolted into action and rolled over him, severing muscles in his leg.
Lands sued the owner of the truck, Lucky B’s Trucking, for negligence and wantonness. Lucky B’s was owned by Betty Ward, who had lent the truck to her husband Kenneth, who in turn had hired Lands to haul timber for his company, Tennessee Valley Land and Timber LLC.
The Wards had warned him the truck had trouble starting and showed him how to hot-wire the ignition to get it running, Lands said. He had successfully started the truck twice that way before the accident crushed his leg.
A trial court dismissed the case on summary judgment, ruling that Lucky B didn’t owe a duty to Lands and hadn’t behaved with wanton negligence. The Alabama Supreme Court reversed in a June 25 opinion that said while Lucky B wasn’t liable for wanton behavior, a jury could conclude the company was responsible for Land’s injuries because it had failed to maintain the truck as required under state and federal regulations.
“Lands established a prima facie case of negligence against Lucky B -- including the duty element -- and demonstrated genuine issues of material fact necessitating jury resolution,” the court concluded.
The court said Lucky B qualified as a commercial motor carrier under federal law -- even though Betty Ward didn’t formally lease her truck to her husband – because it allowed TVL&T to use the truck in a business that affected interstate commerce. (The Alabama Supreme Court cited Wickard v. Filburn, a landmark 1942 U.S. Supreme Court decision that held a farmer growing wheat entirely for his own use was nevertheless subject to federal crop regulations.)
Lucky B argued it wasn’t foreseeable that Lands would get out of the truck, stand on the axle with a lighter in his hand, and try to restart the truck with a loose piece of exposed wire. But that’s too narrow a view of foreseeability, the court said: It is enough that a company should have anticipated some bad outcome its failure to maintain the truck in proper condition.
“Although the sequence of events in this case is unusual, the resulting injury here is not the kind that takes the question of proximate cause away from the jury,” the court concluded.
To knock out a case on summary judgment based on contributory negligence, the defendant must prove that the plaintiff knowingly put himself in harm’s way, the court said. The fact Lands had twice hot-wired the truck without incident negates the suggestion he knew he could be hurt the third time, the court said. The best Lucky B could do was convince the jury to reduce Land’s damages after trial.
The court agreed it was correct to dismiss claims of wantonness, however, since there wasn’t evidence to prove Lucky B knew somebody would be injured by the failure to maintain the truck.