Chaffin v. Brame

• Decision Date: 28 March 1951
• Docket Number: No. 308,308
• Citation: Chaffin v. Brame, 233 N.C. 377, 64 S.E.2d 276 (N.C. 1951)
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: CHAFFIN, v. BRAME.

Page 276

64 S.E.2d 276

233 N.C. 377

CHAFFIN, v. BRAME.

No. 308

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

March 28, 1951

M. T. Leatherman, C. E. Leatherman, Lincolnton, and J. Francis Paschal, Raleigh, for plaintiff, appellee.

J. Laurence Jones, Charlotte, and Sheldon M. Roper, Lincolnton, for defendant, appellant.

ERVIN, Justice.

The assignments of error raise these: questions:

1. Did the court err in refusing to dismiss the action upon a compulsory nonsuit after all the evidence on both sides was in?

2. Did the court err in permitting the plaintiff to amend his complaint after verdict and before judgment?

We consider these questions in their numerical order.

There was sharp conflict in the testimony offered by the parties at the trial. We omit reference to the evidence adduced by the defendant because it is not necessary to an understanding of the questions arising on the appeal. The plaintiff made out this case: At 9 P.M. on March 8, 1950, plaintiff was driving his Ford car southward on Route 18, a paved highway 18 feet wide, in Wilkes County, North Carolina. Defendant's truck was parked upon the right side of the highway without lights or warning signals. It was headed southward, blocked the entire right traffic lane, and virtually blended with the darkness of the night. As plaintiff neared the Dodge truck at a rate not exceeding 40 miles an hour, he met a passenger automobile driven by one Garland, which was proceeding northward along the highway at an extremely low speed, and which was displaying glaring and undimmed headlights. Plaintiff titled the beams of his front lamps downward. When plaintiff came within 200 feet of the Dodge truck, he was partially blinded by the glaring and undimmed headlights on the approaching automobile driven by Garland. He forthwith substantially reduced the speed of his car, and signalled his discomfiture to Garland by blinking his lights. Despite this, Garland failed to dim his headlights. As a consequence of the unlighted state of the parked truck and the partial blindness induced by the glaring and undimmed headlights confronting him, plaintiff could not see defendant's truck until his car passed the headlights of the Garland automobile. At that time the truck was only 30 feet away. Plaintiff attempted to avoid the collision by veering to the left side of the highway, but the right side of his car struck the rear of the truck and sustained damage. The plaintiff's speed did not exceed 20 miles an hour at the instant of impact. The defendant admitted shortly after the accident that his negligence caused the collision.

The defendant concedes that the evidence indicating that he parked his truck on the traveled portion of the highway at night without displaying lights or warning signals is sufficient to establish actionable negligence on his part. He contends, however, that plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law because he did not so control his car as to be able to stop within the range of his lights.

To sustain his position, the defendant invokes the long line of cases beginning with Weston v. Southern R. Co., 194 N.C. 210, 139 S.E. 237, and ending with Marshall v. Southern R. Co., 233 N.C. 38, 62 S.E.2d 489, declaring either expressly or impliedly that 'it is negligence as a matter of law to drive an automobile along a public highway in the dark at such a speed that it can not be stopped within the distance that objects can be seen ahead of it.'

The rationale of these cases was considered in Thomas v. Thurston Motor Lines, 230 N.C. 122, 52 S.E.2d 377, 383, where this elucidation appears: 'Few tasks in trial law are more troublesome than that of applying the rule suggested by the foregoing quotation to the facts in particular cases. The difficulty is much enhanced by a tendency of the bench and bar to regard it as a rule of thumb rather than as an effort to express in convenient formula for ready application to a recurring factual situation the basic principle that a person must exercise ordinary care to avoid injury when he undertakes to drive a motor vehicle upon a public highway at night. The rule was phrased to enforce the concept of the law that an injured person ought not to be permitted to shift from himself to another a loss resulting in part at least from his own refusal or failure to see that which is obvious. But it was not designed to require infallibility of the nocturnal motorist, or to preclude him from recovery of compensation for an injury occasioned by collision with an unlighted obstruction whose presence on the highway is not disclosed by his own headlights or by any other available lights. When all is said, each case must be decided according to its own peculiar state of facts. This is true because the true and ultimate test is this: What would a reasonably prudent person have done under the circumstances as they presented themselves to the plaintiff?'

It thus appears that the cases invoked by the defendant enunciate no mere shibboleth. They simply apply to the factual situations involved in them the fundamental truth that the law charges every person with the duty of exercising ordinary care for his own safety.

Since the nocturnal motorist is subject to this universal duty, his conduct on a given occasion must be judged in the light of the general principle that the law does not require a person to shape his behavior by circumstances of which he is justifiably ignorant, and the resultant particular rule that a plaintiff can not be guilty of contributory negligence unless he acts or fails to act with knowledge and appreciation, either actual or constructive, of the danger of injury which...