Klingenfus v. Dunaway
| Decision Date | 13 May 1966 |
| Citation | 402 S.W.2d 844 |
| Parties | E. C. KLINGENFUS et al., Appellants, v. Willa Bell DUNAWAY, Administratrix of Estate of Jackie Dunaway, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court — District of Kentucky |
Henry V. B. Denzer, Hogan, Taylor, Denzer & Bennett, Louisville, Thomas F. Manby, LaGrange, for appellants.
M. L. Perkinson, James A. Hall, LaGrange, for appellee.
CULLEN, Commissioner.
Jackie Dunaway, a boy just under the age of 15, was employed by the appellants, E. C. Klingenfus and his son Morgan, as a part-time farm worker for the summer of 1963. On a day in July he was directed to drive a 'tricycle-type' farm tractor (one with its two front wheels close together) to the farm of a neighbor about three miles from the Klingenfus farm on a gravel-surfaced road. Some time after Jackie had departed on this mission Morgan Klingenfus set out along the same road, in a truck, to go to the neighbor's farm. Along the road he came upon the tractor, upside down on the edge of the road, with Jackie's dead body beneath it.
Jackie's administrator sued the Klingenfuses for damages for wrongful death, claiming (1) that the defendants were negligent in allowing the boy to drive the tractor without sufficient experience and instruction to be able to handle properly a tractor of this type, and (2) that the front steering mechanism of the tractor was in defective condition. The jury awarded damages of $20,000 and judgment was entered accordingly. Appealing, the Klingenfuses maintain among other things that their motions for a directed verdict and for judgment n.o.v. should have been sustained because of insufficiency of proof that the accident was caused by their alleged negligence. We agree.
No one witnessed the accident. The rear of the tractor (upside down) was in a ditch along the right-hand side of the road in the boy's direction of travel. The front protruded into the road a few feet. The ditch, some 12 inches in depth and concealed by weeds, extended along the right-hand side of the road for a considerable distance. There was evidence that the right rear wheel of the tractor had slid into the ditch at a point 46 feet from the place where the tractor overturned, and that the wheel had run along in the ditch for that distance. There were some 'wobbly' marks in the surface of the gravel road, extending a number of feet back from the point where the tractor came to rest. These might have been made by the front wheels of the tractor and if so they would indicate an erratic turning movement of the front wheels.
The appellee argues that the 'wobbly' marks justify an inference that the tractor went out of control by reason of the claimed defect in the steering mechanism. We think the marks are no more indicative of a cause of the tractor's going out of control than of a result of a loss of control from some other cause.
The appellee further argues that there is a reasonable inference that after the right rear wheel slid into the ditch the boy undertook to get the tractor back on the road and by reason of his inexperience, or the claimed defect in the steering mechanism, or a combination of the two, the tractor overturned. We can agree that the foregoing is a reasonable possibility but we do not think there is basis for an inference that the accident probably so happened, to the exclusion of other reasonable possibilities. We think there is an equal...
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Beverly Hills Fire Litigation, In re
...or two or more ways are equal and there is no evidence as to which way it happened.") (emphasis in original); see also Klingenfus v. Dunaway, 402 S.W.2d 844, 846 (Ky.1966).33 The trial judge instructed the jury as follows:In order for the plaintiffs to prevail, they must establish by a prep......
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Southworth v. Commonwealth, 2012–SC–000179–MR.
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