Teche Lines, Inc., v. Danforth

• Decision Date: 05 April 1943
• Docket Number: 35252.
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: TECHE LINES, Inc., v. DANFORTH et al.

12 So.2d 784

195 Miss. 226

TECHE LINES, Inc., v. DANFORTH et al.

No. 35252.

Supreme Court of Mississippi

April 5, 1943

Geo W. Currie, of Hattiesburg, for appellant.

Stevens & Stevens, of Jackson, amicus curiae.

Currie & Currie, of Hattiesburg, for appellees.

GRIFFITH Justice.

This case involves the proper and permissible interpretation of Sec. 90, Chap. 200, Laws 1938, known as the uniform highway traffic regulation act. This section reads as follows:

"(a) Upon any highway outside of a business or residence district no person shall stop, park, or leave standing any vehicle whether attended or unattended, upon the paved or improved or main traveled part of the highway when it is practical to stop, park, or so leave such vehicle off such part of said highway, but in every event a clear and unobstructed width of at least 20 feet of such part of the highway opposite such standing vehicle shall be left for the free passage of other vehicles and a clear view of such stopped vehicle be available from a distance of 200 feet in each direction upon such highway.

(b) This section shall not apply to the driver of any vehicle which is disabled while on the paved or improved or main traveled portion of a highway in such manner and to such extent that it is impossible to avoid stopping and temporarily leaving such disabled vehicle in such position."

The facts, so far as material to the point to which we shall confine this opinion and decision, are that appellant is an authorized carrier of passengers by motor bus, and on the occasion in question stopped its bus to let off a passenger in pursuance of its established custom and duty in such cases. The pavement of the highway was 20 feet wide, and according to the overwhelming weight of the evidence the shoulders on each side were about 3 1/2 feet wide, making a total width of 27 feet. The stop was made about halfway down an incline approximately 1100 feet long. The bus was about eight feet wide, so that when some room was left to the passenger to alight on the shoulder, and not in the ditch, it was impossible to leave 20 feet clearance opposite the bus. While the passenger was making his way out of the bus appellee's decedent ran into the rear of the bus and suffered injuries from which he died.

The trial court granted appellees the following instructions:

"The Court instructs the jury for the plaintiffs that if you believe from the testimony in the case, that the bus of the defendant was stopped upon the paved or improved or main traveled part of Highway 11, not in an emergency, at a place and time and in such a way as not to leave a clear and unobstructed width of at least 20 feet of such part of the highway opposite such standing bus or vehicle, then such stopping of said bus or vehicle at such time and place, and under such condition, if you believe it was so parked, was a violation of the law and negligence, and if you further believe from the testimony that such negligence, if any proximately caused or contributed to the injury and death of the deceased, then the defendant is liable, and it is your duty to find and return a verdict for the plaintiffs."

The quoted instruction, as may be readily seen, amounts to a peremptory charge in favor of the plaintiff. It tells the jury that if less than 20 feet clearance was left by the bus, this was negligence. The instruction did not permit the jury to say whether it was possible or practical to leave that much, and, as a matter of fact, by the overwhelming evidence, as already stated, it was not even possible much less practicable. It did not permit the jury to say whether the bus was stopped as far to the right on the highway as was possible, and at the same time safe, considering the high degree of care which the bus driver owed to the passengers, including the one then about to alight.

The central principle which runs through all the cases dealing with statutes regulatory of highway traffic is that such statutes must have a practical or workable interpretation, not an arbitrary or unreasonable construction, and never that which would require an impossibility; and this has been the rule from the earliest enactments of such statutes down to this day. We do not prolong this opinion by going into a review of pertinent cases from other states. Hundreds of them are cited and annotated in the elaborate note found in 131 A.L.R., pp. 562 to 607, among which we might mention Kelly v. Locke, 186 Ga. 620, 198 S.E. 754, as particularly persuasive. No case has been cited by appellee, nor have we found any, which under its particular facts would sustain the quoted instruction under facts such as are presented by the record here before us. Even the Minnesota case, Ball v. Gessner, 185 Minn. 105, 240 N.W. 100, of which so much has been made, and which is inaccurately annotated in Vol 11, Uniform Laws Annotated, at page 48, does not under its facts or under all the language used by the Court sustain any such technical interpretation of the statute, or any such hard and fast instruction as was given to the jury in the case at bar. Ball v. Gessner, supra, did not involve a vehicle temporarily stopped for a legitimate or necessary purpose as an incident to travel, but there the truck was parked in the road while the driver was holding a ten-minute conversation with a person over on a road-side farm. As the facts show, and as we shall later mention, we are not dealing in the present case with a parked vehicle.

And we do not need to go to other states for the principle which is to be applied. In Boyd v. Coleman, 146 Miss. 449, 111 So. 600, there was the case where damages were claimed for the non-issuance of automobile tags during the month of December, as required by statute. The defense was that no tags were available during that month and that it had been impossible to obtain them until January 6th. The Court held that although plainly there had been a technical violation of the statute it was not actionable because of the impossibility of compliance therewith. The Court said: "The law does not require doing of an impossible thing, and statutes should not be construed to require performance of duties which are rendered impossible of performance by reason of causes for which person is in no way responsible and powerless to change or remove." And the Court said further, and in language which precisely fits this case: "All laws should receive a sensible construction. General terms should be so limited in their application as not to lead to injustice, oppression, or an absurd consequence. It will always, therefore, be presumed that the Legislature intended exceptions to its language, which would avoid results of this character. The reason of the law in such cases should prevail over its letter. * * * It is a familiar rule, that a thing may be within the letter of the statute and yet not within the statute, because not within its spirit, nor within the intention of its makers. * * * This is not a substitution of the will of the judge for that of the legislator, for frequently words of general meaning are used in a statute, words broad enough to include the act in question, and yet a consideration of the whole legislation, or of the circumstances surrounding its enactment, or of the absurd results which follow from giving such broad meaning to the words, makes it unreasonable to believe that the Legislature intended to include the particular act." See, also, Byrd v. Byrd, Miss., 8 So.2d 510, 512.

In one of our latest cases, Zeigler v. Zeigler, 174 Miss. 302, 303, 310, 164 So. 768, citing numerous other cases in this State it was held that unthought-of results or those which would lead to absurdity will be avoided in the interpretation of statutes, although within the technical terms of the statute, if possible to find a reasonable construction which will avoid such results.

While admitting, as must be admitted, that impossibilities are not required by any statute whatever its subject, it has been argued that when impossible to stop so as to leave as much as 20 feet clearance, the vehicle must keep going until a place may be found where the required clearance can be left, and that argument has proceeded so far as to say that if this require a going forward of ten miles or even farther, this must be done or else the statute would be violated.

This Court may, and it is its duty to, take judicial knowledge of what everyone knows who has been beyond his own door sill, that at least 85% of the public highways of this state are of such width that it is only occasionally possible, and this often at distant intervals, to stop a vehicle so as to leave as much as twenty feet of unobstructed highway to the side of the vehicle. To give the statute in question the literal or hard and fast construction for which appellees contend would lead to unthought of and absurd consequences, which every experienced member of the legislature would be bound to disclaim as ever having been in his mind as a deliberate conclusion. It is enough to say of this that if such a construction could be sustained and enforced, it would dislocate and put out of business the rural mail delivery service on not less than 75% of the rural routes in the state, and a husband could not pick up his wife trudging homeward from the rural grocery store in the rain, or even to attend to a wounded or sick person found on the roadside.

Illustrations of the absurdity could be extended almost without limit; but we pursue this branch of the discussion no further than to quote from the opinion in Colvin v. Auto Interurban Co., 132 Wash. 591, 598, 232 P. 365, 368, wherein the Court said: "We know that on many of our highways one would be required to run his automobile mile upon mile before a...