'Sudden emergency' doesn't spare driver from jury trial

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A medical emergency did not necessarily let a driver off the hook for an injury-accident, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled yesterday, in a rare appellate appearance of "the sudden emergency doctrine."

The sudden emergency, or "inevitable accident," doctrine is less doctrine and more self-evident application of negligence law. The simple rule is that if a driver has a medical emergency and thus unavoidably causes an accident, that's not negligence. The doctrine requires that the medical emergency be confirmed by expert testimony.

You can get to that conclusion readily enough through the usual negligence analysis. A reasonable person having a heart attack could not have averted the same accident, so there was no negligence. "Sudden emergency" is just a shortcut that sanctions the conclusion and perhaps enhances a judge's confidence in awarding the defense summary judgment without a jury trial.

By the same token, however, the usual rules of negligence still apply. Saliently, the doctrine relieves the defendant of liability only insofar as the emergency is alleged to have been the proximate cause of the accident. If the plaintiff points somewhere else on the timeline, to a different alleged misconduct as proximate cause, then the defendant is not necessarily off the hook.

That's where the lower court erred in the instant cases, according to the Appeals Court. The plaintiff alleged that the defendant should have known of the risk of his medical condition and should not have been driving. That's a negligence allegation, and driving despite risk is not an emergency.

The medical evidence, even if weakly contested, supported the defendant's theory that he lost consciousness because of undiagnosed sleep apnea. As a result, his truck ran into the back of the unmoving bus ahead, which the plaintiff was driving. The loss of consciousness was a proximate cause of the accident. But not necessarily the only proximate cause.

The plaintiff's experts proffered evidence that sleep apnea is not something that attacks acutely out of the blue. Though the defendant denied chronic drowsiness, he had a medical history of difficulty sleeping at night and heavy snoring. He also suffered from comorbid conditions, such as obesity.

A reasonable person in the plaintiff's circumstances would have been on notice of the risk of driving, the plaintiff argued. And the evidence was sufficiently in dispute that the plaintiff was entitled to a jury trial on the question, the court agreed.

The court also reversed and remanded the summary judgment for the defendant's employer, as the employer would be vicariously liable for its employee's on-the-job conduct. But the court affirmed summary judgment for the employer on the direct negligence theories the plaintiff had leveled against it.

The evidence developed pretrial did not bear out plaintiff's allegations that the employer had any knowledge of a medical condition that could have impaired driving. So the jury may not hear theories of negligent hiring or supervision.

The case is Cottrell v. Laidley, No. 21-P-740 (Mass. App. Ct. Oct. 18, 2023). Justice Joseph M. Ditkoff wrote the opinion of the unanimous panel, which also comprised Chief Justice Green and Justice Hodgens.