Case Title: Earnest v. State Highway Commission

Citation: 182 Kan. 357, 320 P.2d 847

Docket Number: 40,753

State: kansas

Court: Kansas Supreme Court

Date: 1958-01-25T00:00:00Z

Document:
182 Kan. 357 (1958)
320 P.2d 847
LARRY K. EARNEST and GERALDINE J. EARNEST, Next of Kin of Gary Brent Earnest, deceased, Appellees,
v.
THE KANSAS STATE HIGHWAY COMMISSION, Appellant.
No. 40,753

Supreme Court of Kansas.
Opinion filed January 25, 1958.
Roy G. Lowe, of Olathe, argued the cause, and Wm. B. Kirkpatrick, Assistant Attorney General, was with him on the briefs for the appellant.
Don B. Slechta, of Russell, argued the cause, and Robert L. Earnest, of Russell, was with him on the briefs for the appellees.
The opinion of the court was delivered by
PRICE, J.:
This is an action against the state highway commission by the parents of a six-year-old boy to recover for his death, alleged to have been proximately caused by a defect in a state highway.
The commission has appealed from an order overruling its demurrer to the petition.
*358 The sole question is whether the petition sufficiently alleges a defect within the meaning of G.S. 1949, 68-419, which provides that any person who shall, without contributing negligence on his part, sustain damage by reason of any defect in a state highway, may recover such damages from the state of Kansas.
In the interest of accuracy, we quote the material portions of the petition:
It is then alleged that on or about January 22, 1956, at four o'clock A.M., plaintiff father, accompanied by his wife and their two minor sons, was driving his automobile on the highway in question in a careful and prudent manner; that while so doing he encountered the four-inch drop-off, above described, which caused the car to swerve and skid into the raised portion of the new mat on the left-hand side of the highway causing him to lose control of the car, and that it skidded sideways off the roadway onto the shoulder on the outside of the highway and overturned in the right-hand ditch, resulting in the death of one of his sons.
Since the passage of the statute in question numerous cases arising under it have been before this court. Most of them are cited in the annotations following the statute number in G.S. 1949 and G.S. 1955 Supp. We call attention to three of the more recent decisions  Shafer v. State Highway Commission, 168 Kan. 591, 215 P.2d 172; Sheen v. State Highway Commission, 173 Kan. 491, 249 P.2d 934, and Summers v. State Highway Commission, 178 Kan. 234, 284 P.2d 632.
From these, and the numerous cases cited in the opinions, it is clear that the following rules have become firmly established:
The question whether an alleged defect comes within the purview of the statute is, in the first instance, a question of law to be determined by the court. There is no legal foot rule by which to measure conditions generally and determine with exact precision whether a given condition constitutes a defect. Some conditions may be so patently dangerous as to clearly constitute defects, while others may be so trifling as to be clearly outside the purview of the statute. The policy of courts is to handle each case separately and either to include it in or exclude it from the operation of the statute. Where circumstances are such that an alleged defect cannot be excluded from the operation of the statute as a matter of law, it presents a proper case for a jury to determine. Without any legal foot rule by which to measure an alleged defective condition, it must be compared with general conditions and surrounding circumstances, and, in one sense of the word, the question whether *360 a given condition constitutes a defect within the meaning of the statute is relative.
In the determination of the question whether the petition sufficiently alleges a defect within the meaning of the statute (G.S. 1949, 68-419), its allegations are to be taken as true. Here we have a concrete highway which had been resurfaced with a four-inch layer of asphalt or bituminous mat for approximately ten miles southeast of Garden City. There was nothing to indicate to a driver that such excellent driving conditions would not continue on. But they did not, and suddenly, without warning of any kind, came to an abrupt end insofar as this driver was concerned. He was confronted with a four-inch drop-off in his traffic lane from which there was no escape. We doubt that it would be seriously contended that a four-inch depression or hole extending the entire width of a traffic lane would not be a defect. The allegations of this petition speak for themselves, and we have no difficulty in holding that the condition pleaded constitutes a defect within the meaning of the statute.
Defendant commission relies heavily on the Summers case, supra, but we fail to see the analogy. There the highway was of ordinary black-top construction. It is common knowledge that such type of surfacing tends to feather off and crumble at the edges, especially where it may have been subjected to the rigors of heavy traffic and severe weather conditions. The decision and reasoning of that case are not controlling on the question here presented.
Without further discussion, we are of the opinion the trial court correctly overruled the demurrer to the petition, and the judgment is therefore affirmed.