A defendant's failure to maintain a vehicle is not a proximate cause of an accident if the vehicle's location was not improper and would not have changed the outcome.
A driver is injured when her vehicle collides with an oncoming car while she is making a left turn. She sues the owner of two stationary trucks parked in the opposite left turn lane, alleging the vehicles blocked her view of the intersection. The court considers whether the defendant's failure to maintain the vehicles constitutes a proximate cause of the accident. Because the location of the vehicles was not improper, the court determines that the mechanical disrepair of the trucks had no proximate connection to the collision. The court applies the doctrine of proximate cause to find that the accident would have occurred regardless of the trucks' condition.
No citing cases on record.
v.
AZZARELLI CONSTRUCTION CO., a Florida Corporation, Appellee.
B. Lee Elam, Brandon, for appellant.
Calvin A. Pope, Tampa, for appellee.
SCHWARTZ, ALAN R., Associate Judge.
The plaintiff, Natalie Shephard, appeals from a final summary judgment entered against her below. She was injured when, while attempting to make a left turn on a green light on a busy Tampa boulevard, her vehicle was struck by a car proceeding on a direct course from the opposite direction. In this action, she sued, not the driver of that automobile, but rather the Azzarelli Construction Co., the owner of two trucks, one of which had broken down, and both of which were stopped, unmoving, in the left turn lane opposite and across the intersection from her. Ms. Shephard contended that these vehicles had blocked her vision of the intersection and specifically of the car into which she turned and with which she collided.
Although we agree with the appellant that under the criteria stated in Hoffman v. Jones, Fla. 1973, 280 So.2d 431, she adequately preserved below the applicability of the comparative negligence doctrine, and thus that she is not barred by her clearly-established contributory negligence, we nonetheless affirm the summary judgment below. We do so because it was conclusively established that the location of the defendant's vehicles was not itself improper and, therefore, that the arguably negligent act of permitting the truck to fall into disrepair had nothing whatever, "proximate" or otherwise, to do with the occurrence of the accident, which would have occurred in precisely the same way had the trucks merely been stopped waiting to make a left turn from their proper location in the intersection. Both Sims v. Apperson Chemicals, Fla.App. 1966, 185 So.2d 179, and Smith v. Johnson, Fla.App. 1973, 282 So.2d 178, directly apply and compel affirmance.
Affirmed.
HOBSON, Acting C.J., and BOARDMAN, J., concur.