U-Haul Co. v. White, U-HAUL
| Decision Date | 09 February 1970 |
| Docket Number | U-HAUL,No. 45636,45636 |
| Citation | 232 So.2d 705 |
| Parties | COMPANY v. Sylvia WHITE. |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
Sumners & Hickman, Oxford, for appellant.
D. Briggs Smith, Jr., Charles C. Finch, M. Collins Bailey, Batesville, for appellee.
Sylvia White, appellee, a monor fifteen years of age, through her attorney and next friend, brought this action in the Circuit Court of Panola County, to recover for personal injuries suffered when she was allegedly thrown from a trailer owned and maintained by U-Haul Company, appellant. Plaintiff charged that a defective coupling device, or hitch, and a safety chain on the trailer rented by U-Haul to her mother had permitted the trailer to disengage partially from the towing vehicle, resulting in severe gyrations which flung plaintiff to the ground. The circuit court entered judgment for plaintiff on the jury's verdict of $9,800.
On August 16, 1966, Mrs. Elizabeth L. Dulin, plaintiff's mother, leased a 15 12 foot, tandem-axle trailer from U-Haul for the purpose of transporting furniture from Batesville to Southhaven. Mrs. Dulin, accompanied by the plaintiff, took possession of the trailer at a service station in Memphis, which station was an agent for U-Haul, sometime after eleven p.m., and simultaneously executed a rental contract which provided in section 3:
Customer agrees to indemnify and hold harmless lessor and its duly authorized agents from any and all damages and/or liability arising out of or resulting from customer's use of said trailer and/or equipment.
An attendant at the service station spent twenty minutes attaching the trailer to Mrs. Dulin's car, using fittings and safety chains supplied by U-Haul, and then Mrs. Dulin was told that she could depart.
With the trailer in tow, plaintiff and her mother left the service station and proceeded to collect several passengers to assist in handling the furniture: Jackie White, plaintiff's sister; James White, her brother; Gerald White, her cousin; and Douglas Walker, a friend. The assembled group then traveled to Batesville, and loaded the furniture, completing the job sometime between one and two o'clock a.m. Thereupon, they began the return trip via Interstate Highway 55 to Southhaven, this time with both the plaintiff and her sister Jackie riding in the trailer.
All went well as they passed a Stuckey's Store north of Como and south of Senatobia, and then the accident occurred. According to Gerald White:
Then we were coming back down Interstate 55, going toward Southhaven, and just after we passed Stuckey's we were going along just fine, and this trailer started swerving, pulling the car from side to side. * * * Right before the trailer started swerving, the car seemed to jerk. Just all of the sudden it felt like something popped loose, and the trailer was pulling the car from side to side. We were in the righthand lane, and it pulled the car into the lefthand lane, and the trailer slid off the lefthand lane into the center of the expressway. The furniture was scattered all up and down the highway, and we got out, and I asked my cousin, I said, 'Do you see Sylvia?' He said, 'No.' We couldn't find Sylvia. He saw her first, and then I looked down and I thought she was dead at first. We all thought she was dead. Similarly, in the words of James White:
We were driving about 35 or 40, and when we got down just past Stuckey's, that pecan place, all of a sudden the trailer jerked like that, and it just started jerking the car all over the expressway, and it jackknifed it around, and when we came to a stop the car was halfway on the expressway and halfway off. The trailer was completely off. Mother and all of us jumped out of the car and started looking for my little sisters. We found one of them right away, Jackie. She didn't seem to be hurt, and we started looking for Sylvia. We were looking under the furniture and everything, looking for her, and I seen her. She was laying down there just back of the back wheel on the right side of the trailer. She wasn't moving or anything * *
Shortly after the accident, a passing truck driver stopped and detached the trailer from Mrs. Dulin's car, and Mrs. Dulin rushed Sylvia to Senatobia where she was transferred to an ambulance which delivered her to the Methodist Hospital in Memphis. Mrs. Dulin returned to the scene of the accident. The helpful truck driver was not in attendance at the trial, but others who were present at the scene of the accident said that the U-Haul trailer had become completely disengaged from Mrs. Dulin's car except for the left safety chain. The coupling device was disconnected, and the right safety chain had broken.
H. B. Grisham, an assistant investigator for the Highway Patrol, arrived at the scene of the accident at approximately 3:15 a.m., while Mrs. Dulin was in Senatobia. When she returned, Grisham assisted the group in collecting the scattered furniture and then attempted to reconnect the trailer to Mrs. Dulin's car. He found that the locking device on the trailer hitch was inoperative and, therefore, that the hitch would not remain fastened. Furthermore, he reported that the right safety chain was severed. He performed a patchwork job of securing the trailer to the car and followed Mrs. Dulin to a truck stop where repairs could be made.
Dee Smith, an auto mechanic for eighteen years, who testified for the plaintiff as an expert witness on the subject of trailer hitches, explained that the particular type of coupling device employed by U-Haul-ball and socket-requires a locking device to secure it. If the lock becomes inoperative, said Smith, the socket can loosen.
The only witness offered by the defendant was James Hendren, proprietor of the service station from which Mrs. Dulin rented the trailer, who testified that he could detect no defects in the trailer, except a slightly bent tongue or coupler, when it was returned to him six days after the accident and that, without any repairs, he had returned the trailer to service.
Appellant asserts that the plaintiff is under a disability to maintain an action against U-Haul and that the trial court erred in not dismissing the case on that ground. Pointing to the portion of the rental contract quoted above (§ 3), U-Haul contends that Mrs. Dulin is obligated to indemnify it for any judgment recovered by the plaintiff, and that, therefore, plaintiff is in effect attempting to sue her mother, which is prohibited by the rule of Hewellette v. George, 68 Miss. 703, 9 So. 885 (1891). We do not agree.
Section 3 of the rental contract plainly calls for...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Cuevas v. Royal D'Iberville Hotel
...v. Hinson, 385 So.2d 605, 608 (Miss.1980); Robertson v. Yazoo and M.V.R.R. Co., 154 Miss. 182, 122 So. 371 (1929); U-Haul Co. v. White, 232 So.2d 705, 708 (Miss.1970). Mississippi statutes relating to the sale of alcoholic beverages have sometimes been referred to as the Mississippi Dram Sh......
-
Jordan v. McKenna
...Freeman Truck Line, Inc., 456 So.2d 698, 707 (Miss.1984); Munford, Inc. v. Peterson, 368 So.2d 213, 217 (Miss.1979); U-Haul Co. v. White, 232 So.2d 705, 708 (Miss.1970); Otto v. Specialties, Inc., 386 F.Supp. 1240 (N.D.Miss.1974). Felony convictions may be offered as evidence of the violati......
-
Utz v. Running & Rolling Trucking, Inc.
...Violations of statutes generally constitute negligence per se. Travis v. Hartford, 630 So.2d 337, 342 (Miss.1993); U-Haul Co. v. White, 232 So.2d 705, 708 (Miss.1970). s 86. The Court further stated: The principle that violation of a statute constitutes negligence per se is so elementary th......
-
Stong v. Freeman Truck Line, Inc., 53936
...So.2d 213, 217 (Miss.1979) (same); Powers v. Malley, 302 So.2d 262, 264-65 (Miss.1974) (same); and, most important, U-Haul Co. v. White, 232 So.2d 705, 708 (Miss.1970) Sections 63-3-903 and 63-7-71 were enacted by our legislature to protect motorists on our highways. They made unlawful cond......