INSERRO v. ROCHESTER DRUG COOPERATIVE INC (1999)

Supreme Court properly denied plaintiffs' motion to set aside the jury verdict of no cause of action.   Plaintiffs commenced this action seeking damages for injuries sustained by James Inserro (plaintiff) when the vehicle he was driving struck the rear end of a delivery van driven by defendant Richard R. Cowens.   Plaintiff testified that Cowens stopped abruptly without warning in plaintiff's lane of traffic and that he could not avoid the collision.   Cowens testified that, as he was looking for a parking space, he slowed down and turned on the right-hand turn signal and that, before the van was struck, he had stopped, placed the van in park and turned on the four-way flashers.   There was proof that plaintiff was traveling less than a car length behind the van at a speed of between 28 and 30 miles per hour and that plaintiff could not see the road in front of the van.   There was also proof that, although plaintiff knew that he was in a commercial district and saw the van's right-hand turn signal, he did not expect the van to stop.   The jury found that Cowens was negligent but that his negligence was not a proximate cause of plaintiff's injuries.

“The issues of culpability and proximate cause are not * * * so inextricably interwoven, either because of the nature of the case or the manner in which the jury was instructed, as to render that body's findings with respect to negligence and proximate cause inconsistent and illogical” (Krosky v. County of Schenectady, 240 A.D.2d 879, 880, 658 N.Y.S.2d 749;  cf., Brecht v. Copper Sands, Inc., 237 A.D.2d 907, 654 N.Y.S.2d 520;  Bucich v. City of New York, 111 A.D.2d 646, 490 N.Y.S.2d 208).   The jury could have reasonably found consistent with the jury charge that, although Cowens was negligent in double-parking in the lane of traffic, his negligence was not a proximate cause of the accident (see, Gross v. Napoli, 216 A.D.2d 524, 628 N.Y.S.2d 407;  see also, Hernandez v. Baron, 248 A.D.2d 440, 668 N.Y.S.2d 940;  Sarosy v. Scheina, 225 A.D.2d 493, 639 N.Y.S.2d 817;  Schaefer v. Guddemi, 182 A.D.2d 808, 582 N.Y.S.2d 803).

Order unanimously affirmed without costs.

MEMORANDUM: