Kenneth E. Amos, Jr. and Caitlin Finneman (St. Petersburg, FL) (Automobile Liability) obtained Summary Judgment in a wrongful death case in Lee County, FL.
Background: A pedestrian was struck and killed on a Florida roadway at night. A previous Summary Judgment motion was granted for the defense regarding the decedent’s negligence based upon intoxication. The personal representative of his estate brought a wrongful death action against the owner of a pickup truck and against the man alleged to have been driving it, pursuing the owner on a theory of vicarious liability for permissive use of his vehicle.
No one witnessed the collision. The Plaintiff’s identification of both the vehicle and the driver was entirely circumstantial.
Plaintiff’s Case: The Plaintiff’s case was built on surveillance footage. One video, recorded at a distance and of poor quality, showed a truck that resembled our client’s truck passing the scene. It did not show the driver. A second video, recorded elsewhere in downtown Ft. Myers around the same time, showed a man driving the defendant’s truck with an unidentified passenger.
From that foundation the Plaintiff needed the jury to infer that the truck in the first video was our client’s vehicle, then to infer from that inference that the co-defendant was driving it, and then to infer from those inferences that the driver had been negligent.
Florida law permits circumstantial evidence to carry a negligence case. It does not permit a party to build an inference upon an inference unless the initial inference is established to the exclusion of all other reasonable inferences. That principle decided this motion.
Defense Case: The defense did not rest on the quality of the video. We developed an affirmative record demonstrating that each necessary inference had reasonable alternatives the Plaintiff could not exclude.
Testimony from the mechanic who serviced our client’s vehicles established that the model year in question was produced in two different body configurations. That testimony, together with the traffic homicide investigator, further established that our client’s truck showed no damage to its front end or undercarriage. Nothing in the record excluded the possibility that a similar truck had traveled on that road that night.
The Plaintiff’s accident reconstructionist had relied principally on the police investigative report. The court found he had not conducted a sufficient investigation to determine whether the decedent was visible at all.
The record contained no evidence that the driver of the truck was inattentive, exceeded the posted limit, or was aware of any impact. The decedent was lying in the roadway at the time of contact and was not wearing reflective clothing. As the court observed, making contact with something in the road does not by itself establish negligence in doing so.
For reasons unknown, the co-defendant did not join in the motion, so the case is still pending against the alleged driver of our client’s vehicle.
Verdict: Defense was granted Summary Judgment with Prejudice.