Weber v. Porco
| Decision Date | 29 January 1958 |
| Parties | Carolyn B. WEBER and William C. Weber, Appellants, v. Albert A. PORCO, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
Wheeler & Pelzner, Miami, for appellants.
Wicker & Smith and Jack A. Sudduth, Miami, for appellee.
Appellants Carolyn B. Weber and William C. Weber, husband and wife, who were defendants in the court below, seek reversal of a summary judgment on a counterclaim filed by them against appellee Porco, who was plaintiff below, in an automobile negligence case.
The points before us are whether there was a genuine material issue of fact sufficient to preclude the entry of a summary judgment and also whether a wife who owns an automobile is bound by the contributory negligence of her husband while he is driving the car.
The parties were involved in an automobile collision at an intersection in North Miami. The accident occurred at approximately 10:00 A.M. Plaintiff Porco was proceeding west on Northeast 125th Street, which is a through street. Defendants Weber were traveling north on Northeast 9th Avenue and stopped momentarily at a traffic control stop sign. By his deposition, Mr. Weber stated that he looked to his left and saw no car approaching; he then looked to the right and saw a white automobile proceeding in a westerly direction at an estimated distance of 300 feet east of the intersection. His glance to the right lasted about one second and he could not and did not judge the speed of the approaching vehicle. Having stopped, Mr. Weber then immediately began to cross the intersection looking straight ahead.
Northeast 125th Street is a board thoroughfare containing three eastbound lanes and three lanes for westbound traffic. Mr. Weber crossed the south three eastbound lanes and proceeded north across the center of the street into the westbound lanes. At a point somewhere north of the center of the three lanes for westbound traffic Mrs. Weber saw the approaching Porco automobile and exclaimed that they were going to be hit. She was absolutely correct. The resultant collision caused the Weber Cadillac to hurtle over into a vacant lot on the northwest corner of the intersection. It put Mrs. Weber into the hospital with numerous broken ribs and other injuries. It caused the Chevrolet Corvette operated by Porco to roll over several times, casting Porco himself out of the automobile and causing him to turn numerous somersaults in the process and ultimately to wind up in the hospital for several weeks.
The Webers stated on deposition that they concluded that the Porco automobile was sufficiently far enough away to enable them to negotiate the intersection safely They did this, so they say, at a speed under 20 miles per hour. It is Mrs. Weber's recollection that when the Porco Corvette bore down on them it was being driven at approximately 45 miles per hour. As would be expected, Mr. Porco has an entirely different version. From his point of view he saw the Weber Cadillac stopped at the stop sign on the south side of the street when he was some 25 to 30 feet east of the intersection. According to his version, in a split second the Webers propelled themselves across the three south traffic lanes and into the middle of the north traffic lane immediately in front of his Corvette. Similarly, Mr. Porco asserts that he was traveling approximately 15 miles per hour.
How all of the resultant damage, both vehicular and physical, could have been the product of the abundant caution which each driver asserts he exercised is an aspect of the occurrence leading us to the notion that there was a sufficient factual conflict which would preclude the entry of a summary judgment. The summary judgment came about in the following fashion. After everybody got not of the hospital they proceeded to sue one another. Originally Mr. Porco filed a complaint against Mrs. Weber, the owner of the Cadillac, and her husband the driver thereof. The Webers denied negligence, alleged Porco's contributory negligence and, on their part, filed a counterclaim against Porco claiming that his negligence produced the physical injuries to Mrs. Weber as well as the damage to her Cadillac. In reply to the Weber counterclaim, Porco in turn alleged that the Webers couldn't recover because Mr. Weber's negligence in the operation of his wife's automobile proximately contributed to her injury and damage. Porco then moved for a summary judgment against the Webers on their countercaim. On the basis of the factual situation summarized above the trial judge granted Porco's request for a summary judgment and dismissed the counterclaim. Reversal of his order in doing so is now sought.
The Webers contend that there were sufficient factual conflicts to justify taking the matter to a jury and moreover it is...
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