Farkas v. Halliwell

• Decision Date: 28 February 1950
• Citation: 72 A.2d 648,136 Conn. 440
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: FARKAS v. HALLIWELL et al. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 648

72 A.2d 648

136 Conn. 440

FARKAS v. HALLIWELL et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

Feb. 28, 1950.

T. Holmes Bracken, New Haven, for appellants (defendants).

Joseph N. Manfreda, New Haven, for appellee (plaintiff).

Before MALTBIE, C. J., and BROWN, DICKENSON and BALDWIN, JJ.

BALDWIN, Judge.

The plaintiff sued to recover for damage to his automobile which resulted when it came into collision with a cow owned by the defendants. He claimed that the defendants were negligent because they did not have the cow under reasonable and proper control and because the cow was unattended. The defendants denied any negligence on their part and pleaded and claimed contributory negligence on the part of the plaintiff. The trial court concluded that the defendants were negligent because they failed to restrain and guide the cow along the road properly and adequately, or to have any restraining or guiding device upon the cow, and absolved the plaintiff from any contributory negligence.

The finding, with such corrections as we make in it, discloses this situation: On June 15, 1947, about 7:30 p. m., in daylight, the plaintiff was driving his car northerly on route No. 79 in the town of Madison. The highway, which was thirty feet wide with shoulders on each side and a white line painted along the middle, ran north and south and was straight for a considerable distance. The defendants own land on both sides of the roadway, with a dwelling house on the easterly side and a barn on the opposite side but about 1,000 feet farther south. They were bringing four cows, including the cow involved in the collision, to the barn from a pasture several hundred feet north of their house and on the east side of the roadway. They had crossed to the westerly shoulder of the roadway and were walking south upon it. A witness, Harrison, and his two sons were traveling in a truck northerly upon the highway, intending to stop at the defendants' house. They saw the defendants and their cows, then about 1,000 feet away, cross the roadway and start walking south. The Harrisons met and passed the defendants and their cows a short distance south of the defendants' house. The Harrisons had just brought their truck, which was between five and six feet in width, to a stop on the easterly side of the highway, with its right wheels on the edge of the grass at a point near the front door of the house, when they heard a crash behind them.

The defendants had each been leading two cows along the westerly shoulder. Mrs. Halliwell had been following her husband and the two cows in his charge. She led one cow by a rope around its neck, and the other, an older cow, heavy with calf, walked slowly along behind, without any rope or halter.

The plaintiff was driving northerly at a speed of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour. As he approached the place where the accident occurred, he had a clear view of the straight roadway ahead for at least 1,000 feet. He was driving in the easterly half of the highway until he reached a point about thirty feet south of the Harrison truck, then at a standstill, when he turned out to pass it and struck the cow at a point on the highway about four feet easterly of the westerly line of the traveled portion of the road. He did not reduce his speed up to the moment of impact. He did not see the defendants or their cows, nor did he see the cow with which his car collided until the last moment before the collision. The impact occurred on the westerly, that is to say, the plaintiff's left-hand side of the highway.

It is the plaintiff's claim that the cow suddenly came down a bank off the westerly side of the highway into the path of his car and that bushes and foliage on the side of the road obscured his view. The trial court has not so found, as appears from the facts above stated. It did find that the cow suddenly and without warning ran into the path of the plaintiff's vehicle, but it also found in effect that up to this point Mrs. Halliwell and her cows were walking south along the westerly shoulder and that the plaintiff, without reducing his speed of thirty to thirty-five miles per hour, turned out to pass the parked truck and came over to his left-hand side of the road to within four feet of the westerly shoulder without seeing Mrs. Halliwell or her cow until a moment before the impact.

The question of law is whether or not the finding supports the trial court's conclusions. 'A judgment rendered upon facts found will not be reversed or set aside, unless some erroneous rule of law material to the case has been applied, or unless a conclusion has been reached, or an inference drawn, from a fact, many facts, or the facts found, which affects the judgment rendered in material degree, and is legally or logically inconsistent with that or those facts, or is so illogical or unsound, or so violative of the plain rules of reason, as to be unwarranted in law.' Davis v. Margolis, 107 Conn. 417, 422, 140 A. 823, 825, and cases cited; Endut v. Borodenko, 109 Conn. 577, 582, 145 A. 27.

We first consider the conduct of the plaintiff himself, as the subordinate facts in the finding describe or bear upon that conduct, to determine as a question of law whether or not they legally support the conclusion that the plaintiff was free from contributory negligence. The General Assembly has established by statute a rule of conduct governing situations such as that confronting the plaintiff here. General Statutes § 2489. This statute requires that a driver in such a situation shall reduce his speed when reasonable care shall require, that he shall overtake and pass another vehicle only subject to the right of way of those traveling in an opposite direction...