Articles Posted in Car Accidents

On March 13, 2023, in a memorandum decision, the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed a trial court’s decision for the plaintiff in a negligence complaint despite the defendant-appellant’s argument that the plaintiff failed to provide sufficient evidence that the car accident at issue was the proximate cause of his injuries.

In this case, Thu v. Willis,[1] Guy Willis Sr. (“Willis”) and his sons were rear ended by Sein Thu and subsequently filed a complaint for negligence against Thu. The jury found in favor of Willis, and Thu appealed to the Indiana Court of Appeals, alleging that Willis “failed to present sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdict in his favor.” Particularly, Thu alleged that Willis’s evidence was insufficient because Willis “did not present expert medical testimony to connect the crash to his injuries.”

The court referred to Martin v. Ramos[2] to clarify that expert medical testimony is not necessarily required if a layperson could “readily understand the causation.” In Martin, the Indiana Court of Appeals decided that “when an injury is objective in nature,” the plaintiff may testify to his injury and that testimony may be sufficient for a jury verdict even without expert medical testimony. In his appeal, Thu argued that Willis’s injuries were not objective, but rather too complicated for a lay person to understand. One of Thu’s major points of argument involved the fact that Willis testified to having pain from the accident on his left in addition to a history of sciatica. Thu argued that Willis was not qualified to testify whether his diagnoses were caused by his injuries from the accident or by the prior back pain he already had experienced before the accident.

When imagining a typical car accident, the first thought may be a collision between two cars. However, crashes often may initially only involve one or two vehicles, but end up resulting in a much larger accident as additional vehicles are unable to avoid crashing into the already-disabled vehicles. These accidents are referred to as chain-reaction crashes, and can pose various challenges when assigning fault and responsibility following a major incident.

In a recent news article, two people were tragically killed in a chain-reaction car accident that shut down roads for nearly eight hours. According to the report, a woman was driving a Nissan Rouge early in the morning when she lost control of her car and crashed into a concrete barrier. Her vehicle traveled back into traffic, colliding with a Chevrolet Equinox. The Nissan then crashed into a semi-truck, and another vehicle hit the Equinox.

Following the accident, the driver of the Nissan and her passenger were ejected from the vehicle and pronounced dead on the scene. Local authorities shut down roads for nearly eight hours in order to conduct their investigation, which resulted in a significant diversion of traffic to a nearby expressway.

The human instinct to help those in need, even at the risk of one’s own safety, is commendable. When a person is injured during such a situation, the rescue doctrine can come into play. In Indiana, the rescue doctrine allows an individual who is injured attempting to rescue someone from a dangerous situation to hold the negligent actor liable. In order to bring a successful claim, the rescuer must prove: (1) the defendant owed the plaintiff a duty to protect him from injury; (2) the defendant failed to perform that duty; and (3) the plaintiff’s harm resulted from the defendant’s failure to protect him from injury. If an individual is considered a rescuer, then he is owed a duty of care by those that contributed to the dangerous situation.

In a recent case, another state supreme court was recently tasked with deciding whether a man qualified as a rescuer when he was injured after encouraging others to stop fighting. Ultimately, the court concluded that the plaintiff was a rescuer despite exerting no bodily activity to intervene in the situation. However, in Indiana, an individual must actually attempt to rescue and exert physical effort to be qualified as a rescuer.   

According to the court’s opinion, the plaintiff was injured after attempting to rescue a taxi cab driver from an intoxicated passenger. Hearing cries for help, the plaintiff approached the cab and told the passenger to stop punching the driver. The plaintiff was then hit over the head and run over by the passenger. He filed a lawsuit against the taxi cab company because they had knowledge of previous passenger attacks on drivers but had failed to install partitions or security cameras. Relying on the rescue doctrine, he claimed he was injured while rescuing the driver, who was owed a duty by the cab company, meaning it also owed a duty to him. Among other issues, the court was tasked with deciding whether the plaintiff was considered a rescuer even though he did not take bodily action to save the driver from danger. The court ruled that, rather than requiring physical intervention, one must assess whether a plaintiff can qualify as a rescuer based on three important factors: (1) the plaintiff’s reason for acting, (2) the plaintiff’s reasonable belief that someone was in imminent peril, and (3) the utility of the plaintiff’s conduct. The plaintiff satisfied the test and qualified as a rescuer.

Under Indiana Code Title 9 Motor Vehicles section 9-21-8-35, motorists should proceed cautiously and change lanes when they approach emergency vehicles that are displaying flashing lights or giving audible signals. Individuals who fail to abide by these rules may be subject to criminal or civil charges. Some common vehicles that Indiana drivers should watch for are:

• Police vehicles
• Fire trucks and rescue crews