Dos Santos v. Coleta

This appeal arises from a personal injury action brought by Cleber Coleta Dos Santos (Dos Santos), his wife, and his son against Jose T. Coleta (Dos Santos’s brother-in-law) and Maria A. Coleta (Dos Santos’s sister-in-law), claiming damages for negligence, failure to warn, and loss of consortium following an accident on the defendants’ property in which Dos Santos broke his neck, rendering him a quadriplegic. The jury returned a verdict for the defendants. At issue here is the propriety of the judge’s instructions to the jury and the form of a special jury question submitted by the judge.…