Helaire v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 8114
| Decision Date | 11 March 1981 |
| Docket Number | No. 8114,8114 |
| Citation | 397 So.2d 8 |
| Parties | Charles L. HELAIRE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. LIBERTY MUTUAL INSURANCE COMPANY et al., Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of Louisiana — District of US |
Watson, Murchison, Crews, Arthur & Corkern, William P. Crews, Jr., Natchitoches, for plaintiff-appellant.
Bolen & Erwin, Gregory S. Erwin, Alexandria, for defendants-appellees.
Before CULPEPPER, FORET and SWIFT, JJ.
The plaintiff, Charles L. Helaire, has appealed an adverse judgment rendered following a special verdict of the jury as to his claims against the defendants, William D. Nelson, his employer, Dee Explorations, Inc., and their insurer, Liberty Mutual Insurance Company, for damages allegedly resulting from an automobile-truck accident.
At approximately 7:30 A.M. on November 11, 1978, a rainy and foggy day, plaintiff was proceeding in his automobile in a northerly direction on Old River Road just outside the city limits of Natchitoches, Louisiana. The road surface was a pebbly blacktop with no center line marking. Helaire's son-in-law, Renerick Dwayne Ladkins, was following some distance behind him in another vehicle.
As plaintiff approached the southern end of a curve to his left a truck owned by Dee Exploration and driven by Nelson in the course of his employment was coming out of the curve from the north. The left front end of the truck collided with the left front end of the automobile.
Helaire contends that Nelson crossed the center of the highway and the impact occurred in plaintiff's lane. Defendants contend the opposite, denying negligence on the part of Nelson but pleading contributory negligence of plaintiff in the alternative.
Four days before the trial date Liberty Mutual and an erroneously named defendant filed a motion for a continuance. It was denied, but the trial judge granted defendants "a continuance ... until such time as the application for supervisory writs ... by the defendants herein is acted upon." This court subsequently denied the application.
At the conclusion of the trial the case was submitted to the jury and it brought in the following verdict:
A motion for a new trial was filed and denied.
The first of four specifications of error asserted by plaintiff-appellant is that the jury and trial court were manifestly in error because the record as a whole clearly supports a verdict for the plaintiff.
It is well settled in our jurisprudence, of course, that when there is evidence before the trier of fact which, upon its reasonable evaluation of credibility furnishes a factual basis for the trial court's finding, on review the appellate court should not disturb this factual finding in the absence of manifest error. Expressed another way, we should not disturb a finding of fact of a jury or trial judge unless it is clearly wrong. Canter v. Koehring, 283 So.2d 716 (La.1973); Arceneaux v. Domingue, 365 So.2d 1330 (La.1979).
Briefly stated, plaintiff's principal complaint is that the jury disregarded his account and that of two other eyewitnesses as to the happening of the accident and accepted that of defendant Nelson and an expert in accident reconstruction that was not present when it occurred. This is true, but the credibility of plaintiff and his witnesses was seriously attacked and the question of whether or not they were successfully impeached was for the jury to determine.
It was obvious that plaintiff not only exaggerated his injuries and the symptoms, but it appears that he testified falsely in several respects. There was a serious question as to whether his son-in-law, Mr. Ladkins, was close enough behind plaintiff's automobile to determine which side of the road he was on or whether Ladkins even saw the truck prior to the impact because of the misty foggy atmospheric condition at the time. Mrs. LaCaze, the other witness who was supposed to have seen the accident, was standing in her yard 200 feet away from the point of collision and it is extremely doubtful that she was able to see the two vehicles immediately before impact because of the mist and fog. Contrary to the other witnesses, she testified that the weather was beautiful and sunny. Also, neither one of the latter persons was designated as having witnessed the accident in the plaintiff's answers to the defendants' pretrial interrogatories. This court was informed by plaintiff's counsel, however, that he did not discover Mrs. LaCaze until the morning of the trial.
The plaintiff and several of his witnesses testified that after the accident the two vehicles were on the eastern portion of the road with their wheels on this side in the ditch. However, Nelson and his boss said that both vehicles were then on the east side of the road but entirely on the paved portion thereof. The state trooper who investigated the accident first positioned the truck as having its front wheels in the ditch on the east side of the road. However, upon reference to his accident report it was found that both vehicles were entirely on the paved portion of the highway when he arrived at the scene. They were moved shortly thereafter, however, apparently to let traffic go by.
Joseph H. Barnwell, a retired professor emeritus in mechanical engineering from Louisiana Tech University and an experienced accident reconstruction expert, inspected the scene of the accident and photographs of the two vehicles, consulted the police report and examined Nelson's version of what took place and concluded after his study that the impact occurred on the west or south bound side of the highway wherein the truck was proceeding.
In Billiot v. Bourg, 338 So.2d 1148 (La.1976), our supreme court said:
"When as here the evidence is conflicting, an appellate court should not disturb the trier of fact's reasonable evaluation of one set of witnesses as credible, and its consequent rejection of the testimony of the opposing set of witnesses; nor should the reviewing court disturb the trier of fact's reasonable factual inferences drawn from such testimony found by it to be credible."
From our review of the record we conclude there was a sufficient basis for the jury's evident finding of fact, based on its reasonable evaluation of credibility, that defendant Nelson's truck was not on the plaintiff's side of the highway when the collision...
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