Southern Motor Car Co. v. Patterson

• Decision Date: 12 January 1935
• Citation: 77 S.W.2d 446
• Parties: SOUTHERN MOTOR CAR CO. et al. v. PATTERSON et al.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

Page 446

77 S.W.2d 446

SOUTHERN MOTOR CAR CO. et al. v.PATTERSON et al.

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

January 12, 1935.

Error to Circuit Court, Shelby County; A. B. Pittman, Judge.

Proceeding under the Workmen's Compensation Act by Olie Gladys Patterson and others, claimants, for the death of the husband of the named claimant, opposed by the Southern Motor Car Company, employer, and another. A judgment of the circuit court awarded compensation to the widow, and denied compensation to the other claimants and the employer and another bring error.

Modified and rendered.

Albert G. Riley, of Memphis, for plaintiffs in error.

John Galella and Leo Goodman, both of Memphis, for defendants in error.

SWIGGART, Justice.

This is an action for an award of compensation for the death of Charles L. Patterson, an employee of the Southern Motor Car Company.The circuit court sustained the claim of the widow, but ruled that the other petitioners, nephew and mother-in-law of the employee, were not dependents.

The employer contends that the accidental death of Patterson was the result of his own willful misconduct, and therefore that no compensation should be awarded the widow.Such defense is authorized by the Code, § 6861.

Patterson was an automobile salesman, and at the time of his death was driving a new automobile, of the "heavy car" class, from Memphis to Coahoma, Miss., a distance of 55 or 60 miles, to deliver it to its purchaser.He had with him his nephew, a boy of nine years, and three persons, man, wife, and child, he had picked up on the road.He had been driving rapidly, and was going at a speed of 50 miles an hour or more when the accident occurred.From the time he entered the state of Mississippi the road, graded for a state highway, was surfaced with gravel, and at the point of the accident holes worn in the surface had been filled with loose gravel.Patterson was approaching a curve when he struck this loose gravel, and an eyewitness, a civil engineer of the state highway department, testified that the left front wheel of the car hung in the loose gravel and slid, causing the rear end of the car to rise in the air, turning the car over on its top.Apparently Patterson had applied his brakes to reduce his speed for the curve when his left wheel struck the loose gravel.This witness testified that a speed of 40 to 45 miles an hour would have been safe on that road.

As reflecting on Patterson's consciousness of danger in the speed at which he was driving, his nephew testified that before the accident he said 80 miles an hour in the heavy car was the same as 40 miles in his own light car.

The trial judge's holding that Patterson was not guilty of willful misconduct in driving so rapidly on the gravel surface road imports his finding that Patterson was not conscious of danger, and there is evidence to support this finding.There is no...