Herrera v. Quality Pontiac

134 N.M. 43, 73 P.3d 181 (2003)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Herrera (P), personal representative of Octavio Ruiz, and Jose Encinias, filed a complaint for wrongful death and personal injury against Quality Pontiac (D) following a traffic accident caused by a thief who stole a car from D's lot. The district court dismissed the case with prejudice for failure to state a claim for which relief can be granted. An owner took his car to D for repairs. At D's direction, the owner left the keys in the car and the doors unlocked. The lot was fenced, and the gate was unlocked. Billy Garcia entered the lot and stole the vehicle. The next day, at approximately 11:00 a.m., a Bernalillo County deputy sheriff observed Garcia driving quickly through a school zone and pursued him, engaging his emergency lights and sirens. Garcia drove at a speed of up to ninety miles per hour and collided head-on with Ps' car, which had pulled over onto the shoulder after hearing the sirens. One occupant was killed and the other seriously injured. P presented proof that the local vehicle theft rate was 1,345.5 per 100,000 residents. The expert estimated that between forty-five and eighty percent of stolen cars had been left unlocked and that between nineteen and forty-seven percent of stolen cars had the ignition keys left inside. Most thefts were for joyriding and short-term transportation. The expert estimated that there is a high probability that a stolen car will be involved in traffic accidents, relying on a study which 'found that nearly [seventeen percent] of all stolen cars are involved in accidents in a matter of hours or days after their theft,' and another study which found 'the accident rate for stolen cars [to be] approximately 200 times the accident rate for cars that have not been stolen.' P appealed.