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Slippery slope that line of illogical logic.

Tying into cars, you often hear the ol' "If he hadn't of been speeding, then the collision wouldn't have taken place......"
Of course, to me, that's the same line of reasoning (ignoring real world readily apparent conditions) as "if the other person hadn't been born, then they wouldn't have been there driving, and the collision wouldn't have taken place."

Right, and that was really the point. But, and @roadburner would know better than anyone here, jurors like that DO exist, and far too often! I participated in a criminal trial a year ago where we ended up stalling out due to a small contingent of the jury "not feeling comfortable with convicting a sixteen-year-old kid." Seriously! Ultimately, they were comfortable with flat breaking the oath they took as jurors, but THAT is okay, just not convicting the poor kid. I told the judge that they should get jail time for willfully breaking their oaths, but she said it didn't work like that. Seems to me like it should be the same thing as being held in contempt of court (which, really, that is what it is).

Too bad, but we cannot have accountability, now can we?

Anyhow, for the boulders, it really depends on the reasonability of it. If you place large boulders on your property and far enough off the road as to allow for normal driving errors (i.e., far more room for error than a guardrail provides), I don't see how it would ever be anyone's fault other than the driver. An argument could be made for intent to harm over something like a spike, but a boulder? That is just a protective landscape feature. Anyone harmed by that is doing something so far outside the realm of normal/reasonable, it is no longer even an argument.

I lost a case where the defendant was filmed pointing a gun at the victim (another female). The victim drove away and the defendant shot at her car- hitting it on the C-Pillar. At trial I showed the video three times- and the defendant even admitted shooting at the victim. The jurors thought there was reasonable doubt because I didn't have a ballistics test run on the gunshot damage to the car- never mind that the defendant admitted shooting at the car.

That's why I always told victims that there is no way to anticipate what a jury of 12 people might do- so If a plea gets us most of what we want I would advise taking it.