Ford Motor Co. v. Arguello
| Decision Date | 19 June 1963 |
| Docket Number | No. 3054,3054 |
| Citation | 382 P.2d 886 |
| Parties | FORD MOTOR COMPANY, Appellant (Defendant below), Harold Peterson and Slade Motor Company, (Defendants below), v. Manuel ARGUELLO, Appellee (Plaintiff below). |
| Court | Wyoming Supreme Court |
Harry L. Harris, Evanston, and Ray E. Christensen and Moreton, Christensen & Christensen, Salt Lake City, Utah, for appellant.
G. L. Spence and Spence, Hill, Oeland & Tschirgi, Riverton, and Vincent A. Vehar, Evanston, for appellee.
Before PARKER, C. J., and HARNSBERGER, GRAY, and McINTYRE, JJ.
One of the defendants in this case, Ford Motor Company, has appealed from an adverse verdict and judgment in the District Court of Uinta County. Suit had been brought against Harold Peterson and Ford by Manuel Arguello, plaintiff, who was seriously injured while riding as a guest in a Ford automobile owned and driven by Peterson. The judgment was against both defendants and in the amount of $103,000.
The contentions made by Ford, on appeal, are these:
1. The courts of Wyoming have no jurisdiction over Ford Motor Company.
2. The evidence was insufficient to support a finding that the accident was proximately caused by any negligence on the part of Ford.
3. Plaintiff was guilty of contributory negligence as a matter of law and also assumed the risk as a matter of law.
4. Misconduct on the part of plaintiff's counsel prevented appellant from having a fair trial.
The accident in which Arguello was injured happened November 22, 1957. The automobile involved was a new 1957 Ford. Claiming gross negligence on the part of Peterson, the driver, and negligence on the part of Ford, manufacturer of the car, Arguello sued both the driver and manufacturer. The case was tried to a jury and a joint verdict was returned against both defendants. Peterson and Ford each filed notice of appeal from the judgment rendered on this verdict, but Peterson subsequently abandoned his appeal. The case is now before us for review on Ford's claim of errors.
At the trial Peterson complained of having difficulty steering his car from the time it was purchased. He had been told it was not 'tracking.' According to him it was inclined to pull to the right, particularly on winding roads or left-hand turns, and there was some problem about the tires holding air.
On the evening of the accident Peterson, Arguello, and Harold Hoopes stopped after work, on a construction job, and spent several hours at a bar in Fort Bridger, Wyoming. While there, Peterson claims he looked at the tires and they looked okay. During the time spent at the bar he and the others drank intoxicants. The testimony regarding just what and how much Peterson drank is conflicting.
Peterson had offered to drive Arguello and Hoopes to Lyman, Wyoming, and as the men left they took some beer with them. With Peterson driving and Hoopes next to him and plaintiff on the right of Hoopes in the front seat, the three started toward Lyman which is some four miles east of Fort Bridger.
Peterson immediately accelerated the car and after about one mile made the right turn of an 'S' curve. According to Hoopes, he glanced at the speedometer just east of this turn and the car was going 85 miles per hour. Hoopes asked Peterson to slow down, but Peterson said he would do the driving. Arguello was leaning over Hoopes to adjust the radio and as they came around the curve he was pushed over on Hoopes. He testified that he glanced at the speedometer at that time, and it showed pretty close to 85 miles per hour. He also told Peterson to slow down because he knew there was another curve coming, but Peterson continued his speed. Just at the beginning of the left turn of the 'S' curve the car left the highway.
Sergeant Wold of the highway patrol was notified of the accident. He arrived soon after it happended and made an investigation. His testimony indicates the blacktop of the highway was 23 feet 6 inches wide. The graveled shoulder was about five feet wide, and from that point the road dropped off into a barrow pit.
His testimony further established that the automobile went off the blacktop of the highway and continued on the shoulder and in the barrow pit a distance of 240 feet, at which point it went over a 'terraced off' place and landed 30 feet further along in the bottom of a drain ditch. It then rolled another 95 feet to the place where it came to rest.
This witness theorized that the car landed, after being off the ground for 30 feet, on its right-front wheel, with the vehicle sloping downward and tipped to the right. It made a deep 'gouge mark' at the place of landing. Other witnesses appear to have accepted the theory that the automobile was in the air for a distance of 30 feet and that it landed as the patrolman said. It is not disputed that the force of the impact, when the vehicle landed, caused the spider of the right-front wheel to separate from the rim.
In a separate opinion, Mr. Justice Gray fully discusses the question of jurisdiction. His views on that subject are the views of the court, and for the reasons stated in his opinion we hold the district court had jurisdiction of the subject matter and of Ford Motor Company for purposes of this case. The repetition of our reasons for so holding would serve no purpose in this opinion.
In view of our guest statute, it is clear from the verdict of the jury, against both defendants, that the jury found Peterson guilty of gross negligence and that his negligence was one of the proximate causes of the accident. It is equally clear that the jury found negligence on the part of Ford, in manufacturing the accident vehicle, and that this negligence was a concurrent proximate cause of the accident.
Although the evidence in that regard is in conflict, there was ample expert testimony for the jury to have found, and apparently it did so find, that some of the rivets holding the rim to the spider, on the right-front wheel, were inferior in quality. This would indicate poor metallurgical control and a lack of proper inspection for the purpose of keeping the quality of the rivets up to prescribed specifications, during the manufacturing process.
The spider of which we speak takes the place of spokes in a wheel. It is that part of the wheel that fastens onto the hub and the rim. It is a hollow-shaped disk, stamped and pressed of sheet steel and having four flanges which fasten to the rim. Each wheel has 12 rivets in a single line around the rim, with three rivets for each of the four flanges.
All rivets in this wheel which were in place and holding at the time of the impact were sheared off. In fact 11 of the 12 rivets were so sheared. The shearing effect caused rivet holes in the rim to be elongated in the direction of separation. For most of the holes, this elongation is visible to the naked eye without magnification. Two of the experts, however, on behalf of plaintiff, from laboratory examinations under magnification, corroborated this.
From their examinations, these two experts testified that one of the defective rivets, designated for identification purposes as number 11, had fractured prior to the accident so that it was not holding at the time of impact and was not sheared. Both witnesses said this fracturing would sooner or later allow the rivet to pop out of its hole and into the tire, which was a tubeless tire. The result would be a flat tire caused by air escaping out of the rivet hole. One of the witnesses went on to express the opinion, based upon his independent examination, that rivet number 11 was out of its hole at the time of the accident.
Peterson himself testified repeatedly, and without contradiction, that he felt a flat or low tire. He said he did not know whether it went all the way flat before the wreck, but it was leaking air and it felt like an awfully low tire. He described the result by saying it kept pulling me and pulling me farther and farther down into the ditch, and after he got down into the ditch he could not get back up on the road. Again, he explained that at the time it was happening he did not think the tire was clear flat, but that it was pulling more all the time. He insisted the tire being like it was is what pulled him into the barrow pit.
This testimony standing alone, if the jury believed it, would entitle the jury to find that the loss of air in the right-front tire was one of the causes for the automobile leaving the highway and therefore a concurrent cause of the accident. The tire itself was found after the accident to have no puncture and no place for rapid air escape, unless there had been an open rivet hole.
This, if the testimony of Peterson was belived, leaves the inevitable conclusion that the fractured rivet referred to in the testimony of plaintiff's experts popped out of the hole letting air escape, and that the low tire with Peterson's fast driving caused the vehicle to get out of control and wreck.
We have frequently said it is the function of an appellate court to ascertain whether or not there was substantial evidence upon which the jury could base its opinion if it believed the testimony, and that it is not for us to evaluate the evidence presented. Culver v. Sekulich, Wyo., 344 P.2d 146, 156. The jurors being the sole judges of the credibility of witnesses, we need not say whether they should or should not have believed the testimony of Peterson.
However, there are circumstances where the testimony of a single witness may not be sufficient to support a verdict, such as testimony which is contrary to known physical facts. See Oeland v. Neuman Transit Company, Wyo., 365 P.2d 806, 810. Therefore, we pause to examine Peterson's testimony with a view of determining whether it was corroborated by other evidence and whether it is in fact corroborated or contradicted by known physical facts.
It is undisputed that the automobile began to go off the...
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