Tran v. Woodworth

Syllabus

The plaintiff sought to recover damages for, inter alia, personal injuries he sustained as a result of a head-on motor vehicle collision that resulted in the death of the defendants' decedent. The plaintiff alleged that the decedent's negligence in operating her motor vehicle caused her vehicle to cross over the double yellow lines into his lane of travel, causing the collision. The defendants filed requests for admissions, which requested that the plaintiff admit, inter alia, that he was distracted from the road- way immediately prior to the collision and that he was unaware of the existence of any evidence to contest that the collision occurred in the decedent's northbound lane of travel. As a result of the plaintiff's failure to respond to the requests, the requested admissions were deemed admitted by the plaintiff pursuant to the rule of practice (§ 13-23). The defendants thereafter filed a motion for summary judgment, claiming that they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law and that, on the basis of the plaintiff's admissions, it was uncontested that he, in his distraction, had driven from his southbound lane of travel into the northbound lane and, thus, caused the collision. The defendants also submitted an affidavit from H, an engineer and accident reconstruction- ist, attesting that he had reviewed police photographs from the scene of the collision and that that information conclusively established that the plaintiff's vehicle had crossed from the southbound lane into the northbound lane and collided with the decedent's vehicle. The plaintiff filed an opposition to the defendants' motion for summary judgment, to which he appended a signed, written statement of W, the only eyewit- ness to the collision. W's statement was taken by a police officer who had responded to the scene of the accident. In his statement, W recalled, inter alia, that he had been driving behind the plaintiff in the northbound lane of travel and had witnessed the decedent's vehicle