DENVER (Legal Newsline) – The Supreme Court of Colorado has affirmed a jury’s decision that a taxi cab company owed $940,000 to a man who attempted to stop an assault perpetrated on one of its drivers, only to be run over with the cab by the assailant.
While an intermediate-level state court, the Colorado Court of Appeals, had previously ruled that Colorado Cab Company could not have foreseen one of its cabs being stolen and running over a Good Samaritan – the state’s high court disagreed in a Nov. 14 memorandum opinion from Supreme Court of Colorado Justice William Hood III.
Hood’s colleagues, Chief Justice Brian D. Boatright and Justices Monica M. Márquez, Richard L. Gabriel, Melissa Hart, Carlos A. Samour Jr. and Maria E. Berkenkotter concurred in the opinion.
“Jose Garcia sued Colorado Cab Company, LLC to recover for severe injuries he suffered while attempting to aid one of Colorado Cab’s drivers, Ali Yusuf. Garcia discovered Yusuf being assaulted by Yusuf’s passenger, Curt Glinton. Enraged by Garcia’s interference, Glinton attacked Garcia, first with his fists and then with the cab itself. The jury determined that Colorado Cab was liable for failing to install certain protective devices and awarded Garcia damages,” Hood said.
“In a split decision, a division of the court of appeals concluded, as a matter of law, that Garcia’s injuries resulting from Glinton’s theft and use of the cab as a weapon were ‘outside the risks reasonably to be anticipated’ from both Colorado Cab’s negligence and Garcia’s rescue attempt; that is, Glinton’s theft of the cab and subsequent use of it as a weapon were superseding causes that broke the causal chain between Colorado Cab’s negligence and Garcia’s injuries. It is the division majority’s superseding-cause ruling that Garcia challenges now.”
On the evening of St. Patrick’s Day 2014, Garcia encountered a taxi cab stopped near 44th Avenue and Tejon Street in Denver. Glinton, an intoxicated passenger, assaulted the cab’s driver because he did not want to pay the $6.50 fare. When Garcia intervened and told the men to stop fighting, Glinton then redirected his assault towards Garcia.
Glinton assumed control of the cab, turned it around and ran over Garcia, dragging him. Though Glinton received charges of attempted murder, he pleaded guilty to assault and received eight years in prison.
Garcia, who suffered “extensive injuries, including shattered ear drums, a traumatic brain injury, a fractured eye socket, three broken ribs, numerous torn ligaments, and other injuries that continue to cause hip and back pain” in the assault, filed suit under the “Rescue Doctrine,” arguing that Colorado Cab failed to install partitions and cameras in its vehicles to protect its workers or foresee that drivers (and others) would need protection from violent passengers.
The trial court jury concurred, finding Garcia sustained $1.6 million in damages, with Glinton responsible for the majority of the payment. Colorado Cab was assigned liability and payment to the tune of $940,825.
The Colorado Court of Appeals later reversed the verdict, finding Garcia was not a rescuer in its view because he “merely” told Glinton and the driver to stop fighting – however, the Supreme Court of Colorado overruled the intermediate appellate court and decided that Garcia’s actions qualified under the “Rescue Doctrine” in 2020.
On return to the Colorado Court of Appeals, a 2-1 complement among a trio of judges ruled that Colorado Cab’s negligence was not responsible for Garcia’s injuries and thus was not on the hook for the $940,825 payment.
The dissenter was Colorado Court of Appeals Judge Alex Martinez, who “criticized the majority for substituting its own judgment for the jury’s, asserting that ‘a reasonable jury could – and did – find Colorado Cab liable for the injuries Garcia sustained when Glinton ran him over with the stolen cab.”
Justice Martinez also questioned why the Court departed from its usual analysis of “considering whether the extent of harm, rather than the risk of harm, was foreseeable at the onset of a rescue.”
This led Garcia to petition the Supreme Court of Colorado to reconsider the appeals court’s decision.
The state Supreme Court concurred with the trial court that Glinton’s behavior was an escalation of the assault perpetrated on the driver, Yusuf.
“The evidence shows that Colorado Cab knew that assaults and other violent crimes resulting in serious bodily injury were a foreseeable risk for its cab drivers. For example, one provision in Colorado Cab’s driver agreement with Yusuf explained that ‘operating a vehicle in the transportation of passengers for hire industry is an occupation associated with a potential risk of injury or death.’ And the safety manual Colorado Cab gives to its drivers informs them that, while ‘the number of incidents has dropped in the last [10] years, there is always the danger of being robbed, assaulted or seriously injured.’ It further explains that drivers may encounter three types of passengers – the professional criminal, the irate passenger, and the homicidal passenger – and gives advice on how to handle them,” Hood stated.
“Colorado Cab’s general manager acknowledged that drivers are at risk of being assaulted, robbed or carjacked and that ‘a carjacked or commandeered taxi could cause injury or death to members of the public or pedestrians.’ He explained that drivers are more susceptible to attack, primarily because ‘they oftentimes pick up intoxicated passengers.’ And he acknowledged that there have been numerous assaults against Colorado Cab’s drivers that have resulted in serious bodily injury and a police response.”
Given that evidence, Hood explained that “Colorado Cab’s failure to install certain safety measures in its cabs made it reasonably foreseeable that a passenger would attack one of its drivers and that a third party witnessing such an attack might attempt to aid the driver” – and that “once such an assault begins, it is also reasonably foreseeable that it could escalate in unusual ways, especially given the probability that the assailant will be intoxicated.”
“While the precise way Glinton chose to lash out at Garcia here might seem bizarre, it remains reasonably foreseeable that an intoxicated assailant could seize any weapon at hand to inflict harm on a rescuer who provoked the assailant’s drunken wrath. Simply because a particular manner of causing harm has never occurred doesn’t mean that the risk of the harm occurring isn’t reasonably foreseeable. Accordingly, a reasonable jury could conclude that it was foreseeable that Colorado Cab’s negligence in failing to install safety measures allowed an enraged, intoxicated passenger to commandeer a cab and use it as a weapon against the driver, the rescuer or both,” Hood said.
“In short, we agree with the dissent that, “at the onset of this rescue…the risk of physical harm could easily have been anticipated…[and] could be minor or severe, whether resulting from fists or other weapons…” And we similarly ‘see no principled way to conclude that minor harm, but not severe harm, could reasonably have been anticipated.’ We also agree with the dissent that, although Glinton’s conduct was extraordinary, “the evidence in this case…is not clear enough to warrant taking the question of proximate cause away from the jury.” The jury’s verdict here indicates that it found Glinton’s theft and use of the cab as a weapon to be a foreseeable escalation of the initial, foreseeable assault and not conduct that was fully independent of Colorado Cab’s alleged negligence. We must respect that verdict.”
Supreme Court of Colorado case 21-SC-895
Colorado Court of Appeals case 17-CA-1381
From Legal Newsline: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com