Florida Pub. Co. v. Copeland
| Decision Date | 31 July 1956 |
| Parties | FLORIDA PUBLISHING COMPANY, a corporation, doing business as Times-Union, Appellant, v. William E. COPELAND, a minor, by his next friend, Cleon Copeland, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Harry T. Gray, Mark Hulsey, Jr., and Marks, Gray, Yates & Conroy, Jacksonville, for appellant.
Carl G. Swanson, Arthur T. Boone and Boone & Swanson, Jacksonville, for appellee.
Appellant, Florida Publishing Company, doing business as Times-Union, which was the defendant below, appeals from a final judgment rendered against it after a trial by jury in a suit for personal injuries brought by appellee, as plaintiff. The parties will be referred to as they stood in the trial court.
Defendant raises five questions for us to consider. We think that it is only necessary to determine whether or not the evidence was sufficient to support the verdict and judgment.
The accident and injuries which were the subject of this suit occurred at about 10:30 p. m. on U. S. Highway No. 90, approximately one and one-half miles west of Baldwin, Florida. At the locale of the accident the highway runs east and west and is a straight road for approximately a mile in either direction from the point where the accident occurred. Weather conditions were good.
Plaintiff, driving his father's automobile, and a truck owned by defendant, driven by one of its employees, collided. Plaintiff and the driver of the truck were the only eye witnesses to the accident.
Plaintiff testified that he was driving East to Jacksonville, that a few seconds before the impact he observed lights of an approaching vehicle; that the vehicle was traveling West at a high rate of speed in plaintiff's, i. e. the south or east bound, lane of traffic; that the impact or collision took place in his lane of traffic; that just before the collision the driver of the truck seemed to try to swerve to the other (north side, west bound) lane of traffic; that plaintiff did not know whether he blew his horn, put on his brakes or tried to evade the oncoming vehicle; that he did not remember anything after the impact.
The driver of defendant's truck testified that he was driving West; that he observed a car approaching from the West going East; that as the car got 'pretty close up' the car 'looked like it was beginning to come over, and all of a sudden he cut right over on my side of the road and was coming right facing, meeting me;' that he blew his horn, put his brakes on and tried to pull out of the way and got the two front and one rear wheels of the truck off the highway before 'he hit me'; that the car hit the truck 'right behind the cab on the corner of the truck'; that the impact knocked the rear of the truck around, the truck turned over once and landed on its wheels facing South with the rear wheels in the ditch and the front wheels on the shoulder of the road.
Photographs of the vehicles show that the main force of the impact to both vehicles was to the left side, from fender to door. The left front wheel on plaintiff's car was torn off and the left front of the car was resting on its axle or the hub from which the wheel was torn.
A photograph of plaintiff's car, taken immediately after the accident before the car was moved, shows it facing in a northwesterly direction with approximately the front half thereof across the center line of the road and...
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