Colorado Mandatory Seatbelt Act Revives the Seatbelt Defense
| Jurisdiction | Colorado,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 16 No. 7 Pg. 1210 |
| Pages | 1210 |
| Publication year | 1987 |
1987, July, Pg. 1210. Colorado Mandatory Seatbelt Act Revives the Seatbelt Defense
The Colorado legislature recently enacted mandatory seatbelt legislation. Prior to the enactment of the legislation, Colorado appellate courts had quashed any hope of using evidence of a plaintiff's failure to use an available seatbelt as a defense to a claim of damages arising from an automobile accident. The new Mandatory Seatbelt Act(fn1) specifically allows evidence of non-use of an available seatbelt to be asserted in mitigation of non-economic loss to the plaintiff.
This article gives an overview of the history of the seatbelt defense in Colorado and discusses the new Mandatory Seatbelt Act which allows the defense to be used.
The seatbelt defense was not kindly received by Colorado appellate courts as a common law defense to liability under the contributory negligence doctrine or the Colorado Comparative Negligence Act ("Negligence Act").(fn2) The defense was first considered in Fischer v. Moore,(fn3) an action to recover damages for personal injuries suffered by the plaintiff in an automobile accident where common law contributory negligence applied. The plaintiff was not wearing the seatbelt installed in his automobile. The defendant asserted the defense of contributory negligence on the basis that plaintiff's failure to wear a seat-belt contributed to or increased the plaintiff's injuries. The Colorado Court of Appeals flatly rejected this defense, stating that
the failure of the driver, or the passenger, of a motor vehicle to use a seatbelt does not constitute negligence, contributory or otherwise, and does not constitute a bar to recovery of damages in an action against a tortfeasor whose negligence is the proximate cause of a collision in which the driver or passenger is injured.(fn4)
This decision was affirmed by the Colorado Supreme Court, which considered the seatbelt defense contradictory to the fault philosophy on which the law of torts is based.(fn5) The court considered the defense a deviation from common law negligence that would be warranted only if there were some justification for it in public policy. Because the Colorado legislature had refused to enact previously considered seat-belt legislation,(fn6) the court was reluctant to create a common law negligence defense grounded wholly on public policy considerations. The court was also concerned that the reduction of recoverable damages by a jury because of the non-use of seatbelts would be purely speculative and a windfall to the defendant.
In rejecting the seatbelt defense in Fischer, it appears the Colorado Supreme Court's true concern was the harsh result of allowing the seatbelt defense. If the jury in Fischer had found that the plaintiff's failure to use a seatbelt was contributory negligence, the plaintiff would have been barred from recovery from the defendant responsible for the accident. Even so, the court stated that it would again consider the seatbelt defense in an appropriate case governed by the Negligence Act:
[B]ecause contributory negligence acts as a complete bar to recovery and rests upon different policy considerations, the conclusions reached in this decision should not be construed to apply as a bar to the seat belt defense, in a similar factual setting, under the Colorado comparative negligence statute.(fn7)
After Fischer was announced, attorneys and legal scholars opined that the seatbelt defense would be allowed in cases applying the Negligence Act.(fn8)
The seatbelt defense was revisited by the Colorado Court of Appeals in Churning v. Staples,(fn9) a case applying comparative negligence. The defendant contended that the trial court had erred in not submitting an instruction on the seatbelt defense to the jury. In holding that the trial court properly excluded the proposed contributory negligence instruction, the Court of Appeals followed the Supreme Court's decision in Fischer without analyzing the defense in light of the Negligence Act. The Churning court stated:
While Fischer has not been extended to preclude the...
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