Cooper v. Steptoe

• Citation: 5 La.App. 462
• Decision Date: 28 January 1927
• Docket Number: 2792
• Court: Court of Appeal of Louisiana (US)
• Parties: COOPER v. STEPTOE

5 La.App. 462

COOPER v. STEPTOE

No. 2792

Court of Appeals of Louisiana, Second Circuit

January 28, 1927

Appeal from the Fourth Judicial District of Louisiana, Parish of Morehouse.

Action by D. W. Cooper against R. G. Steptoe.

There was judgment for plaintiff and defendant appealed.

Judgment affirmed.

McHenry Montgomery, Lamkin & Lamkin, of Alexandria, attorneys for plaintiff, appellee.

Shotwell & Brown, of Monroe, attorneys for defendant, appellant.

OPINION

WEBB J.

The defendant appeals from a judgment rendered against him for fifteen hundred dollars, the amount of the damages found to have been sustained by plaintiff, which resulted from a collision between an automobile owned by plaintiff and in which he was riding at the time of the accident, with an automobile owned by defendant.

Plaintiff answered the appeal, praying that the judgment be amended and the amount increased to twenty-seven hundred and fifty dollars, as originally claimed.

OPINION

The defendant urges that the evidence failed to establish negligence on the part of the driver of defendant's car and that it shows the driver of plaintiff's car to have been negligent and his negligence to have contributed to the accident.

It is conceded the collision occurred in the night on the public highway between Bastrop and Monroe at a point where there is a slight curve in the roadway and that at the time of the accident plaintiff's car was being driven towards Monroe and defendant's car was being driven toward Bastrop.

Plaintiff and his minor son, who was about eighteen years of age, and who was at the time of the accident driving plaintiff's car, state that plaintiff's car was equipped with headlights which were burning, and that it was being driven on their right-hand side of the roadway at a speed of twenty or twenty-five miles an hour, and that as they came into the slight curve the headlights of their car fell upon the lenses in the headlights (which were not lighted) of a car on their right-hand side of the roadway, and that plaintiff's son first turned their car further to their right-hand side of the roadway and then to their left, and that their car had reached a point about the center of the roadway when the collision occurred.

On the other hand, the driver of defendant's car and defendant's wife, who was at the time in the car, state that the headlights on defendant's car were burning and hat the car was...