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Recent Developments: Appeals Court Makes Unusual Finding of Fact as "a Matter of Law" in Motor Vehicle Case

From the facts of the case, this is what sounds like happened:  The injured plaintiff was a passenger in an SUV. The SUV was behind a big tractor trailer that was carrying a load of gravel. The driver (I'm guessing) got annoyed about being behind a big, slow truck. So, the SUV passed the truck on the left.

The problem is that the exit the SUV driver wanted to get off on was coming up quickly, so the SUV swerved back in front of the tractor trailer. The truck driver slammed on his brakes, but still hit the SUV, sending it over an embankment.

The truck driver and the company that owned it moved for summary judgment to dismiss the case on the grounds that the truck driver had been confronted with a "sudden and unexpected circumstance, not of [his] own making", that he had no time to react otherwise than how he did, and that he acted reasonably under the circumstances.

The court acknowledged that it is normally up to a jury to decide who was at fault in such a situation.  But it then went ahead and said, however, we find ("as a matter of law"--because courts can normally only decide questions of law, not of fact) that, given the facts, the SUV driver was basically reckless, and the truck driver cannot be held at fault.

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