Ayers v. Morgan
| Decision Date | 22 July 1949 |
| Parties | AYERS v. MORGAN. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Appeal from Circuit Court, Orange County; Frank A. Smith, Judge.
Clark W. Jennings, Orlando, for appellant.
J. Thomas Gurney, Orlando, for appellee.
The appellant failed in his effort to recover damages for injuries claimed to have been received when the automobile driven by the appellee, in which he was riding as appellee's guest, overturned. To prevail, it was incumbent on the plaintiff to prove that the "accident" was caused by the "gross negligence or willful and wanton misconduct" of his host. Section 320.59, Florida Statutes 1941 and F.S.A. As a basis for the evidence he had alleged in his declaration that the defendant was guilty of gross negligence when he operated the car "at a speed of not less than 50 miles an hour" on a "bumpy and wavy" road sixteen feet wide and "almost flat" at a point where it "curved sharply to the right at an angle of approximately 90 degrees ***." He supplemented these charges by averring that the defendant failed to apply his brakes and reduce the velocity of the car to a reasonable rate as he entered the curve and abruptly and violently jerked the steering wheel backward and forward so that the vehicle careened after leaving the curve, turned sideways on the road, and rolled over.
We shall not tarry to discuss the propriety of the court's order overruling the demurrer to the declaration, but shall proceed immediately to the evidence to determine whether, assuming that a case was well stated in the declaration, the jury properly found a verdict of not guilty on evidence which they chose to believe.
Four boys on a pleasure excursion were driving along a paved road about 1:30 o'clock in the morning. Parenthetically, the record is silent about any unusual weather conditions or the presence of any other vehicles as they rounded a curve described by at least one of plaintiff's witnesses as "gradual." The car swerved to the left, whereupon the driver turned it to the right, and then it rolled over two and one-half times. The appellant was asleep; so he knew nothing of the occurrence until he awoke and found that he had been injured, and the driver did not testify.
The exact nature of the curve, averred to have been a sharp one of about ninety degrees described by a roadbed sixteen feet wide, may be better understood by a study of the testimony of a civil engineer--he was apparently disinterested and his qualifications were admitted--and from the plat he prepared. The pavement was sixteen feet and three inches wide at the point where the car in question entered the curve. It widened to twenty feet at the center of the arc and narrowed to sixteen and one-half feet where the road became straight again. For practical purposes the last sixty feet of the roadway on the curve was much wider than that because of its juncture on the outside of the curve with a dirt road, affording added space in which a car could be maneuvered. The distance between the beginning and the end of the curve was approximately two hundred forty feet. The engineer said that it was a curve of twenty-four degrees and that the course of the road in this distance of two hundred forty feet changed approximately sixty degrees. So the jury had a perfect right to believe and, in truth, were convinced that instead of being a sharp...
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...v. Nelson, 149 Fla. 334, 5 So.2d 867; Kozak v. Ake, 147 Fla. 508, 3 So.2d 120; Carver v. Chase, 128 Fla. 287, 174 So. 408; Ayers v. Morgan, Fla., 42 So.2d 2; Baker v. Hausman, Fla., 68 So.2d 572. Here, as in several of the above cited cases, the driver was confronted with a sudden emergency......
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Faircloth v. Hill
...factual evidence of negligence is insufficient to sustain a complaint for gross negligence under the statute cited. See: Ayers v. Morgan, Fla.1949, 42 So.2d 2; Leslie v. West, Fla.1949, 38 So.2d 821. As a matter of fact it is exceedingly difficult, if not well-nigh impossible, to delineate ......