Couch v. Hensley
| Decision Date | 04 October 1957 |
| Citation | 305 S.W.2d 765 |
| Parties | Hargis COUCH et al., Appellants, v. Thomas T. HENSLEY, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
Murray L. Brown, Brown & Bird, London, for appellants.
John M. Lyttle, Roy W. House, and Pleaz W. Mobley, Manchester, for appellee.
STANLEY, Commissioner.
The appeal is from a judgment for the plaintiff for $2,000 in an action for damages sustained in an automobile accident. There is little, if any, material conflict in the evidence of the circumstances. The question is whether there were issues of inferential facts sufficient to submit the case to the jury.
The plaintiff, now appellee, Thomas T. Hensley, lived on a county road which runs for a short distance alongside the south edge of Highway No. 80 and enters it on a declivity at an angle of something like 45 degrees. At this point the highway is straight for 300 yards to the east and 200 yards to the west. The plaintiff left his home one morning in May, 1956, to go to Manchester. The weather was clear and the roads were dry. Hensley testified that he stopped his Plymouth car before entering the highway and Hensley had heard no horn of an approaching car. He was not sure whether he crossed the highway diagonally, following the direction of the county road, or went straight across. He got to the north or his right side of the road, about 89 feet from the intersection, when the defendant's truck struck the rear of his car and knocked it off the highway down an embankment. The car was practically demolished and Hensley was severely injured.
The plaintiff's wife, who was on her front porch, corroborated him as to having stopped the car before entering the highway and stated that 'nothing was coming.' After he had crossed, she looked up the road and saw the truck coming 300 yards away and heard the horn blow in front of her house, which seems to have been about 150 feet from the intersection. Another witness testified the plaintiff stopped his car, then crossed and stopped again on the other side of the highway. He testified that the truck was 'going fast.' Mary Wiseman, who was at her home on the county road, added corroboration with her statement that she first saw the truck at a restaurant shown to be some 250 or 300 yards away.
When the court had overruled the defendant's motion for a directed verdict, he went forward with the proof.
The driver of the truck, Roe Estep, testified that it was a tandem truck and was loaded with about 18 tons of coal. He was going about 30 or 35 miles an hour. He saw Hensley's car 'coming out of the hill' and, as he thought, come to a stop, but Hensley kept on. Estep testified he blew his horn and put on his brakes when he was about 20 steps or 60 feet away from the intersection and did everything he could to stop the truck but could not within that distance. The car got out on the road and then 'bucked and stopped.' Estep pulled the truck over to the left side but couldn't get around the car. His best judgment was that the car was 'angled across the road' and there was no room for the truck to get by. This testimony is corroborated by a witness who was riding with Estep. A state policeman testified that...
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