## Facts

- Esther Hunter-Lyons pulled out from a parking lot onto Arctic Boulevard in Anchorage in front of a southbound truck driven by David Jette, an employee of Midnight Sun Transportation Services, Inc.
- Jette braked and steered left; Hunter-Lyons continued moving into the lane, and the truck collided with her vehicle, killing her.
- David Lyons, individually and in representative capacities for the estate and children, sued Midnight Sun, alleging Jette negligently caused the collision, including by speeding.
- Expert testimony conflicted on Jette’s speed (including a claim he may have been traveling about 53 mph versus testimony the crash could have occurred even at the 35 mph limit) and on whether steering left was negligent or a normal, safe reaction.
- Over Lyons’s objection, the trial court instructed the jury on the sudden emergency doctrine.
- The jury found Jette was negligent but that his negligence was not a legal cause of the accident, and judgment was entered for Midnight Sun.

## Issues

1. Whether instructing the jury on the sudden emergency doctrine was error in this automobile negligence case.
2. Whether the sudden emergency doctrine is compatible with Alaska’s comparative negligence system and should continue to be used in Alaska negligence cases.
3. If the instruction was erroneous, whether the error was harmless in light of the jury’s finding of negligence but no legal causation.

## Decision

- The Alaska Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for Midnight Sun.
- Any error in giving the sudden emergency instruction was harmless because the jury found negligence but no legal causation, and the doctrine concerns the standard of care rather than causation.
- The court prospectively disapproved use of the sudden emergency doctrine in Alaska, concluding it is unnecessary and tends to confuse the negligence inquiry.

## Legal Principles

- Negligence is measured by the conduct of a reasonable person under the circumstances; an emergency is part of the circumstances, not a separate standard.
- A sudden-emergency instruction is directed to the standard-of-care analysis and does not resolve legal causation.
- Under comparative negligence, juries can account for emergency conditions through ordinary reasonableness and fault allocation, making a sudden-emergency instruction redundant and potentially misleading.
- An instructional error is harmless when the verdict demonstrates the challenged instruction could not have affected the dispositive finding.

## Conclusion

The court upheld the defense verdict because the jury’s lack-of-causation finding made any sudden-emergency instruction nonprejudicial, and it directed that future Alaska negligence cases should proceed under the ordinary reasonable-person standard without a separate sudden-emergency instruction.


Lyons v. Midnight Sun Transp. Servs., Inc., 928 P.2d 1202 (Alaska 1996)