Case ID: nc_262/html/0493-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CüRiam.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

J. HOWARD FORBES v. JAMES F. BRITTON and Wife, NORA A. BRITTON.
    (Filed 23 September, 1964.)
    Automobiles § 42d—
    Evidence that plaintiff reduced his speed to some twenty miles per hour in entering an area of fog and smoke, and collided with defendant’s vehicle which was standing without lights in his lane of travel some twenty-five feet in the fog, held not to show contributory negligence as a matter of law.
    Appeal by defendants from Morris, J., December 1963 Session of CuRRitucK.
    The plaintiff instituted this civil action to recover for personal injuries sustained in an automobile accident. His evidence tended to show these facts:
    About 7:45 a.m. on December 4, 1961, while operating a pickup truck southerly on U. S. Highway No. 158 in Currituck County at a speed of from forty to fifty miles per hour, plaintiff observed a patch of fog three- or four-tenths of a mile away. He reduced his speed and drove into the fog at fifteen or twenty miles per hour. He then discovered that the fog was mixed with smoke. A pine thicket was burning near the highway. When he was ten or fifteen feet into the smoke and fog he observed in his lane of travel the defendants’ automobile, ten or twelve feet away, stopped without lights. Defendants’ car had entered the smoke and fog three or four minutes before. The shoulder on the west was sixteen feet wide, and three other vehicles which had entered the smoke and fog had driven onto it. The right front of plaintiff’s truck collided with the left rear of defendants’ automobile, and plaintiff sustained serious injuries.
    
      Defendants’ motions for nonsuit, timely made, were overruled. The jury, upon sharply conflicting evidence, answered the issues in favor of the plaintiff and awarded damages. 'From judgment entered on the verdict, defendants appealed.
    
      John H. Hall for plaintiff.
    
    
      LeBoy, Wells & Shaw for defendants.
    
   PER CüRiam.

The sole question here is whether plaintiff’s evidence disclosed his contributory negligence as a matter of law. Although this is a borderline case, the issues, we think, were properly submitted to the jury. Dawson v. Transportation Co., 230 N.C. 36, 51 S.E. 2d 921.

No error.