Powell v. Langford

• Decision Date: 01 December 1941
• Docket Number: Civil 4409
• Citation: 119 P.2d 230,58 Ariz. 281
• Parties: LYNNE POWELL, Appellant, v. A. B. LANGFORD, Appellee
• Court: Arizona Supreme Court

119 P.2d 230

58 Ariz. 281

LYNNE POWELL, Appellant, v. A. B. LANGFORD, Appellee

Civil No. 4409

Supreme Court of Arizona

December 1, 1941

APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of the County of Maricopa. Howard C. Speakman, Judge. Judgment affirmed.

Mr. T G. McKesson, for Appellant.

Messrs Sloan, Scott & Green, for Appellee.

OPINION

LOCKWOOD, C.J.

This is an appeal from a verdict and judgment in favor of A. B Langford, plaintiff, in an action for damages as the result of an automobile accident. The factual situation immediately before and at the time of the accident may be stated as follows:

On January 7, 1940, one John E. Powell was driving a Buick automobile on the main public highway between Tempe and Mesa, Arizona. He was very much under the influence of intoxicating liquor at the time, and had just forced several cars to leave the road in order to avoid colliding with him. At the same time plaintiff was driving a Dodge pickup automobile, in which he, his wife Jocosa, and his five year old son James, were riding. When the Dodge car reached a point approximately one-half mile east of the Lone Palm service station between Tempe and Mesa, and while it was moving east on the extreme southerly side of the four-lane highway between the two towns, the Buick car being driven by Powell on the north side of the road in a westerly direction suddenly swerved diagonally almost entirely across the highway, and struck the Dodge car head-on. Just before the time of the accident Powell was proceeding at a rate of from forty-five to seventy-five miles per hour, while the Langford car was being driven between twenty-five and thirty-five miles per hour. As a result of this collision, plaintiff, his wife and son all received serious injuries, his car was badly damaged, and Powell was killed.

The overwhelming weight of the evidence was to the effect that the proximate cause of the accident was the negligent act of Powell in swerving his car to the wrong side of the highway, and, indeed, this is not questioned by counsel for defendant.

The action was not brought against the estate of John E. Powell, but against Lynne Powell, his wife, the theory of thus bringing it being that Lynne Powell was the sole owner of the Buick automobile, and that she loaned it to her husband, John E. Powell, to drive when she well knew, and had known for years, that he was a habitual dipsomaniac and utterly unfitted to be entrusted with the use of so dangerous an instrumentality as an automobile at any time. The evidence offered on the trial showed clearly that John E. Powell had been for years, to the knowledge of his wife, defendant herein, a habitual drunkard of the worst type, and that a number of times he had been involved in automobile accidents caused by reason of his drunkenness. Nor, indeed, was this fact seriously disputed by defendant, her principal defense on the merits of the case being that the Buick automobile was not, at the time of the accident, her separate property. She claimed that it was originally either the community property of herself and husband, they being residents of Arizona, or else, if they were residents of Illinois, it was their joint property, and that it later became the separate property of her husband by virtue of an agreement in contemplation of divorce, so that she was not liable for a personal judgment against her by reason of the ownership of the car.

It is admitted that the Buick automobile at all times was registered in the name of defendant, and not in the name of John E. Powell, or of defendant and John E. Powell together. It is further admitted that after the accident defendant claimed and sold the Buick as her own; that she did not have the estate of her husband administered, but gave a bill of sale of the automobile in her own name.

It is not disputed that the Buick was originally purchased and paid for by defendant's father-in-law in Chicago, Illinois. In the latter's deposition he stated, in substance, that he did so for the mutual benefit of his son and daughter-in-law, but that he placed the car in her name so that his son would not be able to dispose of it. The testimony of defendant confirmed that of her father-in-law in regard to why and how the purchase and gift was made. She also testified that in November, 1939, she and her husband had decided to separate and divide their property, which consisted of some household furniture in Tucson and the car, and that he was to take the car and she was to take the furniture, but no divorce proceedings had been filed nor had any formal transfer of the property been completed at the time of his death.

There can be no question, legally speaking, that defendant had the right to pass the title of the car at any time from its first registration until she did actually dispose of it, without the consent or signature of her husband, and that it was placed in her name with the express purpose and intention of preventing his having anything to say about its disposal. On the other hand, we think a reasonable conclusion is that it was intended that he get the benefit of its use. We are satisfied the evidence is such that the jury could well have believed that defendant was the legal owner of the car in her own right, and the only interest which her husband had therein was that it was...