Hilburn v. Shirley
| Decision Date | 02 September 1983 |
| Parties | Donnie HILBURN v. Hubert SHIRLEY. 82-604. |
| Court | Alabama Supreme Court |
R. Blake Lazenby of Wooten, Boyett, Thornton, Carpenter & O'Brien, Talladega, for appellant.
William C. Roedder and T. Bruce McGowin of Hand, Arendall, Bedsole, Greaves & Johnston, Mobile, for appellee.
This is an appeal by the plaintiff from a summary judgment granted in favor of the defendant in a case growing out of a collision between a tractor-trailer truck driven by the plaintiff and a Chevrolet Vega driven by the defendant, who concedes in brief that "the manner in which it occurred is disputed between the parties." We reverse and remand.
The plaintiff was driving a tractor-trailer rig loaded with pipe, weighing overall about 84,000 pounds, north on Water Street, a six-lane street, early on the morning of October 14, 1980. He was en route to the State Docks facility and maintained that he had successfully completed a lane change to the middle lane when the defendant "darted" in front of his truck, causing the accident. Defendant, on the other hand, contends that the plaintiff merged his truck into the traffic lane already occupied by the defendant, thereby causing the accident. The plaintiff vehemently denies this and says that the defendant came from the right lane into the middle lane directly in front of the truck, the front bumper of which collided with the driver's side of the Vega, just behind the front door.
The plaintiff by deposition said that he did not see the defendant's car before the collision. As soon as he got his rig stopped, he put on the air lock brakes and "jumped out of the truck." It is about six feet to the ground, and he did not use the steps because:
The jump from the truck caused injury to the plaintiff's lower back, ultimately resulting in surgery.
The single issue is whether under these facts, as a matter of law, it must be said that the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury was not the collision, but instead, a separate, independent intervening event which could not reasonably have been foreseen.
As we have said so often since the adoption of Rule 56, A.R.Civ.P., because of the nature of negligence actions, almost always issues of fact are involved so that summary judgment is rarely appropriate in such cases. Tolbert v. Gulsby, 333 So.2d 129 (Ala.1976).
Proximate cause has been defined as "the primary moving cause without which [the injury] would not have been inflicted, but which, in the natural and probable sequence of events, and without the intervention of any new or independent cause, produces the injury." Mobile City Lines, Inc. v. Proctor, 272 Ala. 217, 224, 130 So.2d 388 (1961). The defendant concedes that the manner in which the accident occurred is disputed. Taking the facts most favorably, as we must, to the non-moving party on motion for summary judgment, they would support a finding of negligence on the defendant's part in causing the initial collision. However, he argues that the plaintiff's act of jumping from his truck to see if the defendant was hurt was the superseding cause of his injury, absolving the defendant of liability for his original negligent act. We cannot agree that this is so as a matter of law. "An intervening cause which is set in operation by an original negligent act, or...
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...judgment, and that breach of duty determinations are generally for the finder of fact to resolve at trial. See, e.g., Hilburn v. Shirley , 437 So.2d 1252, 1254 (Ala. 1983) ("because of the nature of negligence actions, almost always issues of fact are involved so that summary judgment is ra......
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