Ernest Williamson v. R. Lynn Clark

• Decision Date: 13 February 1931
• Parties: ERNEST WILLIAMSON v. R. LYNN CLARK
• Court: Vermont Supreme Court

153 A. 448

103 Vt. 288

ERNEST WILLIAMSON v. R. LYNN CLARK

Supreme Court of Vermont

February 13, 1931

November Term, 1930.

Automobiles---Negligence---Skidding Alone Insufficient Evidence of Negligence---Res Ipsa Loquitur---"Ordinary Care"---"Reasonable Control"---Inferences Justified from Inability To Stop Automobile Quickly and Easily---Duty of Motorist Trailing Other Automobiles---Jury Questions.

1. Mere fact that motor truck skidded did not of itself constitute evidence of negligence.

2. Doctrine of res ipsa loquitur, held not applicable, where motor truck skidded upon application of brakes and thereby collided with automobile approaching from opposite direction.

3. "Ordinary care" requires automobile driver to have his machine under reasonable control so as to avoid injury to other travelers having equal rights in highway.

4. "Reasonable control" requires that speed of motor vehicles shall be reasonable under circumstances.

5. Test of control is ability to stop quickly and easily, and when this result is not accomplished, inference is warranted that car was running too fast, or that proper effort to control was not made.

6. In trailing other cars motorist must govern his speed or keep back reasonably safe distance so as provide for contingency of car in front stopping suddenly.

7. In

ACTION OF TORT against driver of motor truck for negligence. Plea general denial. Trial by jury at the March Term, 1930 Washington County, Buttles, J., presiding. At the close of plaintiff's evidence, the court directed a verdict for the defendant. The plaintiff excepted. The opinion states the case.

Judgment reversed, and cause remanded.

NOTE. MR. JUSTICE WILLCOX sat at the hearing of this case, but took no part in the disposition of it.

John J. Finn and H. William Scott for the plaintiff.

Theriault & Hunt for the defendant.

Present POWERS, C. J., SLACK, MOULTON, WILLCOX, and THOMPSON, JJ.

OPINION

THOMPSON

The plaintiff seeks to recover damages for injuries he received when the Oakland touring car he was driving collided with the defendant's truck on South Main Street in the city of Barre on September 9, 1929. At the close of the plaintiff's evidence the court directed a verdict for the defendant. The plaintiff excepted.

There is very little dispute, if any, as to the facts of the case. In the vicinity of the place of collision South Main Street is twenty-seven feet and two inches wide and has a cement surface with cement curbings on each side. The street runs northerly and southerly. There is a steep hill in the street sloping northerly. Near the foot of it Boynton Street extends easterly from South Main Street. The collision occurred nearly opposite the intersection of the streets. It occurred in the forenoon and it was raining hard at the time. The defendant's truck is a large truck of the type used for transporting granite in that vicinity, and is twenty-one feet long. It was being operated by one Alfred Higgs, an employee of the defendant.

The plaintiff was traveling northerly down the hill at a rate of speed between fifteen and twenty miles an hour, and was on his right of the center of the street at all times. The defendant's truck was traveling southerly. A Ford car was directly ahead of the truck, and a Star car directly ahead of the Ford. The driver of the Star car went into Boynton Street. As he approached a point opposite the intersection of the street he signalled with his hand that he was going to stop or make a left turn and stopped his car. He then turned to his left, crossed South Main Street safely, and passed into Boynton Street. When the driver of the Star car signaled with his hand, the driver of the Ford signaled that he was about to stop and did stop. When the driver of the Star car passed in toward Boynton Street he proceeded on his way. When Higgs saw the signal of the driver of the Ford, he immediately applied the foot and emergency brakes on the truck, and the truck skidded immediately so that it was diagonally across the westerly half of the street with its forward end a few feet easterly of the center of the street and directly in the path of the Oakland car. The collision followed almost instantly. When Higgs applied the brakes, the truck was, and had been for some distance, traveling at a rate of speed between fifteen and twenty miles an hour.

David Stevens, who was riding on the driver's seat of the truck with Higgs, testified: "We were coming up South Main Street going toward Williamstown in the truck, and it was raining pretty heavy at the time; came along, and suddenly Mr. Higgs applied his brakes, both foot and emergency brake, and a Ford car in front of us slowed up, and we gradually approached that car when Mr. Higgs applied his brakes which swung or skidded the truck partly over the center of the road." He also testified that the Ford was three or four feet ahead of the truck when the cars collided; that he first saw the Oakland car when it was five or ten feet in front of the truck, and "then came the crash." The plaintiff testified that he did not see the truck until he passed the Ford, "and it was just as I got by the Ford car I seen a green flash in front of me, I don't remember any more"; that by "green flash" he meant, "Green truck, green front of the truck."

Two of the acts of negligence alleged in the plaintiff's complaint as the proximate cause of the collision are that the defendant "carelessly, negligently and imprudently operated his said automobile at an imprudent, careless and negligent rate of speed; with said car wholly beyond proper control."

Two of the grounds for a directed verdict are that it appears from the uncontradicted evidence that the truck did not skid by reason of the speed at which it was traveling, but because the brakes were applied, and that was the prudent thing for the driver to do; and that there is nothing shown in the evidence but what Higgs had the truck "under perfectly proper control." The court directed the verdict on both grounds of the motion.

It is true, as claimed by the defendant, that the mere fact that the truck skidded does not of itself constitute evidence of negligence on the part of the defendant. Hatch v Daniels, 96 Vt. 89, 117 A. 105; Kelleher v. Newburyport, 227 Mass. 462, 116 N.E. 806, L.R.A. 1917F, 710; Burke v. Cook, 246 Mass. 518, 141 N.E. 585; White v. Ciriaco, 105 Conn. 553, 136 A. 70; Simpson v. Jones, 284 Pa. 596, 131 A. 541. And so the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur does not apply. Barret v. Caddo, 165 La. 1075, 116 So. 563, 58 A.L.R. 261; King v. Wolf Grocery Co., 126 Me....