Background
Aaron Angel brought a negligence action against Tiffany and David White and Joshua Regan following a multi-vehicle collision. Angel testified that while stopped at a red light, his truck was struck twice from behind. Witness Andrew Myers, on the phone with Angel at the time, confirmed hearing a crash and Angel reporting two impacts.
The collision sequence was hotly disputed. Regan testified he was traveling 40-45 mph in the middle lane when White’s vehicle passed him on the right and improperly cut him off; he claimed he then struck White’s moving vehicle without braking. White testified she was stopped at the red light and felt one impact from behind that propelled her into Angel’s truck. Angel’s forensic engineer, Steven Koontz, reconstructed the accident to show White’s vehicle struck Angel’s truck first, then Regan’s vehicle struck White, pushing her vehicle into Angel’s truck again.
The Whites presented expert Bradley Cook, a forensic engineer, who opined that Regan struck White’s stopped vehicle at a 56 mph speed differential, propelling her at 27 mph into Angel’s truck. Cook testified Regan’s account was physically impossible and that White did not contribute to the accident.
The Court’s Holding
The Florida Second District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s directed verdict in favor of the Whites and remanded for a new trial. The court held that the trial court improperly weighed the conflicting expert testimony and exceeded its authority in granting a directed verdict. Directed verdicts in negligence actions should rarely be granted and only when no reasonable view of the evidence could support a verdict for the non-moving party.
The court rejected the Whites’ argument that Regan’s version was physically impossible based on Cook’s expert opinion. The court explained that when two experts offer conflicting factual conclusions—as Koontz and Cook did regarding the sequence of collisions—it is the jury’s unique function to evaluate and weigh the evidence, not the trial court’s role to resolve the dispute through directed verdict. Koontz’s testimony that White rear-ended Angel constitutes direct evidence of that fact, not an impermissible inference stacked upon other inferences.
Regarding the presumption of negligence attaching to rear-end drivers, the court clarified that this presumption does not preclude jury consideration when evidence supports a different scenario. Here, expert testimony that White herself was the rear-end driver in her collision with Angel undermined application of the presumption to eliminate all negligence claims against her.
Key Takeaways
- Trial courts cannot grant directed verdicts in negligence cases by choosing between conflicting expert opinions on factual matters; such disputes must go to the jury.
- When the evidence supports different reasonable inferences about what occurred, the issue is factual and must be submitted to a jury, even if one party’s version seems more plausible to the trial judge.
- An expert’s testimony to the existence of a physical fact constitutes direct evidence and cannot be dismissed as an impermissible stacking of inferences.
- The presumption of negligence for rear-end drivers is rebuttable and does not eliminate the need for jury consideration where evidence supports an alternative sequence of events.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces a critical protection for negligence plaintiffs: the right to have a jury hear and resolve disputes about what actually happened when expert testimony conflicts. By reversing on directed verdict grounds, the court limited trial judges’ ability to short-circuit jury trials by deeming one expert’s account “impossible” while discounting another’s. This is particularly important in comparative negligence jurisdictions like Florida, where liability may be apportioned among multiple parties based on their relative fault.
The opinion also clarifies the distinction between direct evidence (an expert’s testimony regarding a fact) and inferential evidence, preventing trial courts from dismissing expert testimony as merely speculative stacking of inferences. For practitioners, the decision underscores that conflicting expert opinions on accident reconstruction or causation should survive summary judgment and directed verdict motions, reserving final judgment on credibility and weight for the jury.