Drury v. Ryan (Mar. 21, 2025, G063080) __ Cal.App.5th __
Defendant, while attempting to turn left across three lanes into a parking lot, collided with plaintiff. Plaintiff filed a lawsuit for motor vehicle negligence. Because the evidence indicated that defendant failed to yield the right-of-way in violation of Vehicle Code section 21801, plaintiff requested a negligence per se instruction. The trial court refused and “instead instructed the jury on the basic reasonable person standard of care, as well as section 21801.” The jury returned a verdict in favor of defendant, finding that defendant was not negligent.
The Court of Appeal reversed, holding that the trial court should have instructed the jury on negligence per se which would have clarified the application of section 21801 to the case. “[W]here there are statutes that explicitly spell out the standard of care for a given situation, a negligence per se instruction is warranted [in order to] . . . elucidate how the statutes pertain to the analysis the jury must undertake. Jurors will know what the statute says, but not its significance or how it applies to the case they must decide. Jurors here were told only what section 21801 said–not what they should do with it.”
