Emily S. Knepper

A New Jersey court has denied a defendant’s request for a new trial after a jury found him negligent in a rear-end collision. The defendant argued that the accident occurred due to hydroplaning and requested a special jury instruction based on Mockler v. Russman, which states that a driver is not negligent merely because their vehicle skids. The trial court declined to give the charge, and the jury ruled in favor of the plaintiff, finding the defendant’s negligence caused the accident and the plaintiff’s permanent injury. On appeal, the court upheld the verdict, concluding the jury was properly instructed on negligence and had sufficient evidence to find the defendant at fault.

This case stems from a motor vehicle accident in which the defendant rear-ended the plaintiff. According to the defendant, the accident occurred because his vehicle hydroplaned on standing water on the roadway. In his pre-trial memorandum requested a jury charge pursuant to Mockler v. Russman, 102 N.J. Super. 582 (App. Div. 1968). The proposed charge read: “[i]f a driver is operating [their] car as would a reasonably prudent person under the circumstances, [they are] not to be held negligent merely because [their] car skidded or slid, resulting in damage or injury to another.” (Mockler charge). 

The court did not give the Mockler charge, concluding that defense counsel was permitted to argue the defendant was not doing anything wrong, he was acting as a reasonably prudent person, but that the defendant was not entitled to [the trial court] telling [the jury] that. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, finding the defendant was negligent, the negligence was a proximate cause of the accident, and that the plaintiff sustained a permanent injury caused by the accident. 

The defendant moved for a new trial, arguing the court erred in not giving the Mockler charge. 

Review of jury instructions in a civil case involves a two-step process. First, we must determine whether an error actually occurred. In civil matters, the trial court should give an instruction that appropriately guides the jury on the legal basis of a plaintiff’s claim or a defendant’s affirmative defense, so long as there is a reasonable factual basis in the evidence to support that claim or defense. Jury charges must outline the function of the jury, set forth the issues, correctly state the applicable law in understandable language and plainly spell out how the jury should apply the legal principles to the facts as it may find them. Second, we must determine whether that error may have affected the trial’s result. 

Importantly, we have noted that an improper jury instruction is a poor candidate for application of the harmless error rule, and a charge which misleads a jury will require a reversal and a new trial. Here, contrary to defendant’s arguments, the jury did not lack a basis to find the defendant’s inability to stop was anything other than negligence. The jury was appropriately given the negligence charge regarding the operation of a motor vehicle. The jury was instructed that automobile drivers are “required to use reasonable care in the control and management and operation of their [vehicles].” 

Notably, regarding the defendant’s negotiating the wet road on the day of the accident, the jury was instructed: “A driver is required to make such observations for traffic and road conditions, and to exercise such judgment to avoid collision or injury to others on the highway as a reasonably prudent person would have done in the circumstances.” The court determined the jury could have reasonably concluded from the legitimate inferences in the record that the defendant could not have foreseen that the icy condition of the road would cause the bus to skid and hence was not guilty of negligence. Therefore, the defendant is not entitled to a new trial. 

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